Ava Tribušon Ovsenik: Roots

The exhibition’s title, Roots, takes inspiration from a scene in La grande bellezza, in which the protagonist Jep Gambardella asks an elderly nun why she eats only roots. She simply replies: “Because roots are important.”

Starting from this tension between literal roots and emotional, personal, and cultural ones, Ava develops a body of work reflecting on origins, belonging, memory, and the fragile structures through which identity takes shape. Within her practice, large-scale paintings often emerge from observations of crowds and collective environments, spaces where intimacy, excess, coexistence, and disorientation unfold simultaneously.

Alongside them, sculptural objects operate almost as counterweights: quieter presences that contain, stabilize, and ground the emotional density of the paintings. If the paintings dissolve into masses and movement, the objects remain close to the ground, becoming intimate and silent offerings.

AVA TRIBUŠON OVSENIK
Ava Tribušon Ovsenik (b. Ljubljana, 1997) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Berlin. She holds an MA from the Royal College of Art (2023) and received her BFA with special recognition from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana (2021).
She complemented her studies at Parsons School of Design in New York (US), Berlin International University of Applied Sciences and Anhalt University in Dessau (DE). Ava also undertook several educational programmes and residencies including Academia Nuts at the Ulay Foundation in Ljubljana (SI) and the Rise of Women in Western Balkans in Zadar (HR).
She presented her first solo exhibition with VIN VIN in 2024 and her first institutional solo at UGM Maribor in December 2024.