Ana Kotar Škarjak

CONTACT

ABOUT

Born in Novo Mesto, Slovenia in 1987

Lives and works in Berlin since 2012

My practice examines repetition, maintenance, and care work as forces that structure both intimate and social life. I work from inside these structures, as a mother, and as someone for whom this labor is not abstract.

Care is not a private emotion but a form of labor that is disproportionately carried out by women, while remaining unpaid, expected, and taken for granted. Drawing on feminist frameworks of reproductive and affective labor, my work asks how this becomes normalized, how it settles into domestic space, into the body, into the texture of everyday life.

Using textile, domestic objects, scent and sound, I build installations and performances where accumulation and sensory overload become the work itself. Pieces are stacked, woven, layered, drawing the viewer into an experience that mirrors the condition, where overwhelm is not incidental but structural. The materials accumulate, restrain, and endure, as do the bodies shaped within them.

BIO

Ana Kotar Škarjak (b. 1987, Novo Mesto, Slovenia) is an artist based in Berlin. Her work examines how subjectivity is formed through repetition, material organization, and spatial control. Using installation, scent, and everyday materials, she constructs environments in which discipline operates without a clear point of origin- emerging through alignment, containment, and accumulation.

She is the recipient of the LJUBAW Art Grant (2025) and a Visual Arts Research Grant from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion (2025).

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS & PERFORMANCES

2026
- IN FORMATION, R17 Experimental Zone, Berlin, Germany

2025
- Who is Taking Care of the Caregiver?, Telegraph Gallery (TLG Club), Olomouc, Czech Republic
- Again and Again, Roam Projects, Berlin, Germany
- Caution M/Other, Kunstraum m3, Berlin, Germany

2024
- Recollections Like Threads, Woven Through Time, Co-Making Matters, Haus der Statistik, Berlin, Germany

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS & PERFORMANCES

2025
- Who is Taking Care of the Caregiver?, BUNA Forum for Contemporary Art Vol. 3, Varna, Bulgaria
6th Triennial of Young Artists, Galerija sodobne umetnosti, Celje, Slovenia
- Cultural Loops, SOV Gallery, Berlin, Germany

2024
- Wish You Were Here: The Second Best Time Is Now, A.I.R. Gallery, New York, USA

2014 - 2013
- Papergirl Linz, Stadtwerkstatt, Linz, Austria
- Memory: International Mail Art Exhibition & Swap, Richmond Art Gallery, Canada
- Grafika, Kulturni Center Novo Mesto, Slovenia

AWARDS / GRANTS

2025
- Visual Arts Research Grant, Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion, Berlin, Germany
- LJUBAW Art Grant, Ljubljana Art Weekend (ETC. Magazine)

RESIDENCIES

2024
- Co-Making Matters, Haus der Statistik, Berlin, Germany

PRESS / PUBLICATIONS

2025
- Exhibition catalogue, PREMIERA 2025, Celje, Slovenia
- Interview, Telegraph Gallery Journal
- Interview, Spalt Magazine (print)

EDUCATION

2015
- B.A., Contemporary Drawing and Art Pedagogy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

2007
- School of Design and Photography, Ljubljana, Slovenia

ADDITIONAL PRACTICE

- 2022–Resumed artistic practice

- 2015–2022 Tea practice and sensory work, Berlin

UPCOMING

2026
- Galerija Kocka, Novo Mesto, Slovenia (solo)
- Y Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia (solo)

St.-Nr.: 14/550/04380