Dalea Kovačec: Why Can I Still Hear When I Cover My Eyes?

2 April – 18 May 2025

Ivan Grohar Gallery

Curator: Anabel Černohorski

The works of the intermedia artist Dalea Kovačec often explore memory and related processes on both personal and social levels. Her exhibition Why Can I Still Hear When I Cover My Eyes? brings together two spatial installations, The Chorus of Conflicts (2023–2025) in the first gallery room and Reminiscences of Hiding II (2019–2025) in the second. The first installation gives visitors the opportunity to participate in a special karaoke variant, focusing their attention on the issue of interpersonal conflicts. By transforming the space through enlarged chairs and bed sheets, which feature drawings made by children, the second installation seeks to evoke childhood memories. With each new presentation of her projects, the artist envisions the involvement of the local community. The exhibition’s playful title puts viewers in a child’s perspective, while also emphasising the audio part of both installations.

Dalea Kovačec’s artistic practice focuses primarily on shared human experiences. She often explores autobiographical memories and the processes of remembering, the formation of personal identity and various factors that influence an individual both in childhood and adulthood. The artist not only aims to present ideas, but also to inspire reflection and arouse emotions. This is why visitor participation is key to her practice and she encourages it through a variety of strategies and approaches. Thus, the final effect of an artwork also depends on an individual’s willingness to participate, for example in karaoke singing while visiting this particular exhibition.

Boasting a strong visual and audio presence, the interactive performative installation titled The Chorus of Conflicts is staged at the entrance to the gallery. A disco ball mechanism creates dynamic lighting effects and the tunes of well-known children’s songs are played through the speakers. There are two microphones and a TV screen showing the lyrics of songs. The content of these songs, however, does not fit into this light-hearted ambience as the lines are made up of phrases typical of arguing that are usually said in the heat of the moment.

By shifting various elements – words, content, objects and situations – from an expected to an unexpected context, Dalea Kovačec shakes our learned anticipation on several levels, thus creating the conditions for cognitive dissonance. The artist builds on merging all things seemingly incompatible. Even the images that serve as a background for the texts are incongruous when paired with the shiningly decorated set design. They are collages of photographs showing home interiors with a touch of nostalgia, which infuses the work with a temporal dimension of bygone times. The artist has turned the relationship between public and private spheres upside down. She has transferred interpersonal conflicts, usually taking place behind closed doors, into a public space that recreates the atmosphere of a nightclub and, ultimately, a gallery. The artist’s work sheds light on the question of inherited behaviour patterns.

The work titled Reminiscences of Hiding II deals more explicitly with memories of childhood spaces. The installation occupies a part of the first room and the entire second room of the exhibition venue. The enlarged chairs, white bed sheets and sound create a special, proportionally distorted space, similar to a children’s tent, which visitors enter with their shoes taken off.

To enlarge these items, the artist used the ratio between the average size of a four-year-old and a chair, transferring it to the average size of an adult person. The soft floor, made up of enlarged mats similar to those found in playrooms, is colour-coordinated with the preschoolers’ drawings on the bed sheets. Giant cushions, also covered with children’s drawings, add to one’s feeling of entering an alternative reality. The artwork establishes a dialogue between intimate childhood spaces and adult perception.

The installation is adapted to the space and updated with new drawings for each presentation. New bed sheets with children’s drawings are created in collaboration with local preschools, becoming part of the installation. The drawings previously made by the children from Ljubljana and Maribor have been supplemented with the drawings created by children from the Škofja Loka area.[1] The preschoolers taking part in the workshops are part of an age group where the intrusion of external influences on artistic expression is not yet so obvious. In other words, in children up to the age of four or five, imitating a realistic style and adapting to established patterns of depicting objects through drawing is generally not so pronounced.

The idea behind the work are intimate, cosy nooks and hiding places that children often create for themselves, for example, under tables or blankets. The artist tries to evoke the memory of these spaces in adults, especially by enlarging the individual installation elements. She has also incorporated a disturbing, incoherent sound into the recreated children’s hiding space, one that alludes to arguing or a conflict in an obvious enough way, which thematically links the work to The Chorus of Conflicts. However, in contrast to the first work, where the phrases are clearly expressed, they are indiscernible in the second installation. The artist thus creates tension and emphasises the gap between the worlds of children and adults. On the one hand, the incomprehensible sounds of arguing mark the world of adults, which children have no concept of, while on the other hand, the meaning of children’s abstract or considerably stylised drawings is impossible to grasp for adults.

The exhibition brings together the worlds of childhood and adulthood in a one-of-a-kind way, raising questions about the patterns learnt through upbringing. With her interactive work The Chorus of Conflicts, the artist encourages reflection on the ways in which we argue and highlights the absurdity of some of the ever-repetitive forms of behaviour in which we can recognise ourselves. By placing the topic of conflict in the gallery space, she also seeks to contribute to breaking down the taboos surrounding conflict. In fact, conflict is an everyday occurrence and an integral part of close relationships. Public space appears to be largely occupied by images of people who are constantly happy and smiling, especially when it comes to social media posts and the plastic representations of relationships produced by the advertising industry, when in reality they are much more complex.

With her exhibition Why Can I Still Hear When I Cover My Eyes?, Dalea Kovačec shows in a playful way one of the less visible sides of every close relationship. The artist emphasises that conflicts per se are not a negative thing; they are a form of expressing one’s feelings or needs. In a healthy relationship, the existence of conflicts is not problematic, it is, however, important to deal with them in an appropriate way. Art has long been more than just an aesthetic expression, in fact, it can also act as a mirror to help us become aware of what we already know. Works of art thus open up a space for reflection, but in the end it is up to us to decide what to do with our new insights.

[1] The following preschools participated in the Reminiscences of Hiding II project: Jelka Preschool, Palčki Unit, Ljubljana (2019); Tezno Preschool, Lupinica Unit, Maribor (2021); Ivan Glinšek Preschool, Kosarjeva Unit, Maline Group, Maribor (2021); Škofja Loka Preschool, Najdihojca Unit, Srček Group, and Kamnitnik Unit, Zvonček Group (2025).

Dalea Kovačec

Dalea Kovačec (1993, Ptuj) is an intermedia artist who explores the relationship between memory and media in various social contexts. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, where she graduated with the thesis Altered Memories (2016). During her undergraduate studies, she participated in a study exchange at The Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland (2015/2016). In 2018, she received the ALUO UL Special Achievement Award. In 2021, she was nominated for the Oho Group Award. She has held several solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous joint exhibitions in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Turkey, Poland, Hungary and Slovenia. In 2023, she participated in two international artist residency programmes abroad: the İzmir Mediterranean Biennial in Turkey and the Videopark Festival in Užice, Serbia.

Acknowledgements: Anja Kužnik, Bojan Stefanović, Aicha Meštrović Boughazi, Marko Damiš, Vrtec Škofja Loka, Zavod O, Zavod škofjeloške mladine, Zbor nenehne

Accompanying programme

Wednesday, 16 April 2025, at 17:00: A guided tour of the exhibition with the artist and curator.