Based in Ljubljana and Berlin, Marjetica Potrč examines in her works issues related to social space and contemporary architectural practices, sustainability and the search for new solutions for diverse communities worldwide. Her practice is strongly informed by interdisciplinary collaborations in research-based on-site projects that are characterized by participatory design and a concern with sustainable solutions. Her work emphasizes individual empowerment, problem-solving tools, and strategies for the future, as well as testifies to the failure of some of the grand principles of Modernism.

Potrč translates her on-site investigations into drawings and large-scale architectural installations that have been exhibited extensively throughout Europe and the Americas, including at the Venice Biennial (1993, 2003, 2009) and the São Paulo Biennial (1996, 2006).

In May 2015 Potrč’s latest temporary on-site project opened in London. Created in collaboration with Ooze architects (Eva Pfannes and Sylvain Hartenberg), Of Soil and Water is a natural swimming pond nestled like an oasis amid mounds of earth, cranes and bulldozers on the building sites behind King’s Cross station.

In her talk Potrč will present her on-site projects, focusing on Of Soil and Water: The King's Cross Pond Club, and The Soweto Project, which was developed in early 2014 by Potrč and the students at her class on participatory practice ‘Design for the Living World’ at University of Fine Arts in Hamburg. Potrč says that on-site projects give artists an opportunity to play a role in the new participative society emerging in the West and elsewhere. In both projects - Of Soil and Water: The King's Cross Pond Club, and The Soweto Project, relational objects and performative actions are emplyed by the artist as tools to change the culture of living - a change Potrč deems is necessary in the construction of a conceptual framework for a more resilient future and the survival of societies in the Anthropocene Age.

Marjetica Potrč was born in Ljubljana in 1953, capital of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, which was then part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. She received degrees in architecture (1978) and sculpture (1986, 1988) from the University of Ljubljana. In 1990, Potrč moved to the USA. Her installations from this period often involved walls of various kinds, e.g. Two Faces of Utopia (1993, made for the Slovene Pavilion at the Venice Biennial), and the series Theatrum Mundi: Territories (1993–1996). In 1994, she moved back to Ljubljana. Since then, Potrč's work has developed at the intersection of visual art, architecture, and social science.

Beginning with her six-month-long research in Caracas in 2003, Potrč's practice has been distinguished by extended research projects in regions that are reinventing themselves after the decline of 20th-century modernism. Most significant have been her projects in the Amazonian state of Acre in western Brazil in 2006 (in conjunction with the São Paulo Art Biennial); the Lost Highway Expedition in nine cities in the Western Balkans (Ljubljana, Zagreb, Novi Sad, Belgrade, Skopje, Pristina, Tirana, Podgorica, and Sarajevo); and her research project on water issues in post-Katrina New Orleans in 2007-2008.

Since 2011, Potrč has been a professor at the University of Fine Arts/HFBK in Hamburg. She has also been a visiting professor at a number of other institutions, including the MIT (2005) and IUAV in Venice (2008, 2010).

Potrč has received numerous prestigious awards, including grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (1993, 1999), the Hugo Boss Prize administered by the Guggenheim Museum (2000), and the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics Fellowship at The New School in New York (2007).

In 2011 Potrč was chosen by Blake Gopnik in Newsweek as one of ten most important contemporary artists alongside Francis Alÿs, Artur Żmijewski, Tacita Dean, Sophie Calle and Damien Hirst.

The talk will be followed by a Q&A session.

This event has been kindly supported by the Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia in London.