Olja Triaška Stefanović is an artist, educator, and researcher based in Bratislava, Slovakia. She was born in the former Yugoslavia, but during the Balkans war in the 90s, she settled in Slovakia permanently.
Olja Triaška Stefanović is the recipient of a 2022-2023 Fulbright Scholarship, where she conducted research at Parsons School of Design in New York. She is currently an Associate Professor of Photography and Visual Art and the head of the Studio of Photography and Critical Practice at the same Academy. She also serves as the head of the Photography and New Media department at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design since 2021. Prior to this, she taught for many years, specializing in the creation and production of Photo books – PHO BO, together with Associate Professor Juraj Blaško.
Her current teaching and research interests address aspects of the political imaginary, with a particular focus on critical thinking through artistic practice involving visual literacy, the rhetorical dynamics of knowledge conflict and violence, environmental issues and theories within contemporary art, the position and development of contemporary photography, decolonial practices, minorities, gender studies, and gender identities; history, and politics.
She is the laureate of the 2019 Foundation Novum - Grant for contemporary Artist in Bratislava, Laureate of the Mayor's Prize in Bratislava - Grant Bratislava, granted within the Slovak Press Photo. In 2015, she was declared the photographer of the year in Slovakia by the Central European House of Photography, and in 2010, she was the finalist of the 4th Award of the National gallery in Prague for young artist - “Award 333”.
She cooperates on many publications focused on architecture, including "Friedrich WIENWURM ARCHITECT" by Moravčíková, H. SLOVART, 2014, "SHARED CITIES ATLAS, Post-socialist Cities and Active Citizenship in Central Europe," Editor: Helena Dudova, nai010 publishers, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2019, "AT THE END OF THE ROAD," Stefanović Triaška.O. / Dulla M., Slovart, 2017 – 127, "Modern and/or Totalitarian," Moravčíková H., SLOVART, 2013 - 311. The book "Friedrich Weinwurm – Architect" was among the prize winners of the DAM Architectural Book Award 2015 in Frankfurt, Germany, and announced as one of the 10 best books of architecture in the world.
Many of her previous exhibition projects focused on the historical, political, and cultural context of former Yugoslavia and the consequences of the civil war in the 1990s. Her latest projects, "Brotherhood and Unity," primarily react to war and ethnic conflicts in the Balkans, where she explores her own memory, the breakup of Yugoslavia, family history, the formation of new nations, and new geographies in the context of Central and East Europe.
Her latest author's book, “Brotherhood and Unity,” was presented in Slovakia, New York, San Francisco, Vienna, and Ljubljana. She regularly exhibits both in Slovakia and internationally. Her works are part of the permanent collections at the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava and the City Gallery in Nitra, Slovakia.
Currently, her visual research is focused on the former Yugoslavia and Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
“My project takes as a backdrop a search for the (non) monuments to the Non-Aligned, that inspired the geo-political project undertaken by Josip Broz Tito, the president of the former Yugoslavia. Through archival images, documents, and a photographic essay featuring images from New York, San Francisco, Belgrade, and Berlin, this visual essay explores the tension between the realpolitik of the Cold War, its remnants and traces in the built environment, images, etc., and those of this utopic and ambitious project but one which is much less recognizable since its heyday in the 1960s. This is an introduction to the larger visual research that mixes the architectural, political, and the autobiographical, which will be later presented in the form of a book in 2024”.
Olja Triaška Stefanović
