Jan Durina

#2 min Jan Durina

1. 9. 2022

Jan Durina, from the series Cute & Tragic, 2019 & from the series Horal, 2017
Jan Durina, from the series Cute & Tragic, 2019 & from the series Horal, 2017
Fotograf zone Futures talentsIdentity

Horal + Cute & Tragic

Project combines images from the series Horal (Mounteineer) and the project Cute & Tragic that is presented in the form of photographs and performance recordings. The masks and costumes displayed within Cute & Tragic are characterized by their fantastic form, lushdecoration and precision of execution. The author creates all disguises and accessorieshimself, sews and embroiders by hand only from secondary materials of second-hand clothing. It builds on the experience of the high school of clothing design, which, togetherwith the interest in photography, shifts to the enchanting narrative associated with thetopics of mental health, identity, sexuality and queerness. While series Horalrefers to many phenomena and feelings characteristic of nowadays, although many attributes work withsettling in a kind of timelessness. Who is that Mounteineer? The enchanting persona withseveral faces, who also brings his social roles or remains to the remote corners of the Tatra Mountains.

Jan Durina was nominated to Futures Talents by Fotograf Zone in 2022. 

Co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union, FUTURES is a platform to increase the capacity, mobility and visibility of it's selected artists and to bridge the gap between emerging and established artists.

 


IMAGES CAPTIONS

All images: Jan Durina, from the series Cute & Tragic, 2019 & from the series Horal, 2017

Fotograf zone Futures talentsIdentitySelfportraitPerformanceTherapyFashion

Jan Durina

(1988) is a young Slovak interdisciplinary visual artist who, through a wide range of media, creates a peculiar universe of beings, identities, and narratives that seem to originate from this world only as its distorted mirror echoes. His work is not strictly autobiographical, but questions of personal identity and sexuality, mental health, and the intimate aspects of his own experience are deeply embedded in it. His imagination, shaped by melancholy and the deprivation of someone who rejects a normalized, stereotyped world authentically and painfully, often leads him to explore corporeality and the human figure. And it becomes “quite evident which characters resonate with him and in which he playfully or ironically comments on overflowing testosterone-fueled egos.3” His artistic thinking is informed by critical concepts of queer, feminist, and ecofeminist theories, as well as Autotheory. At the heart of his work lies a common, overarching theme: mental health, human vulnerability, and care for others, alongside collaboration and the dynamics of non-hierarchical relationships. Human fragility has long ceased to be dogmatically suppressed as a weakness—art was among the first disciplines to recognize the need for its rehabilitation. Durina’s photographs, textiles, hand-embroidered and embellished objects, and drawings serve as mental maps of his body’s trajectories—collapsing, temporarily vague, refusing to fulfill expectations placed upon it, resisting through its wounds and fractures, and striving to love itself just as it is. In doing so, it becomes fully human.

Fotograf zone

Rencontres d’Arles 2025

#6 min Markéta Kinterová

Rencontres d’Arles 2025

Fotograf zone Review

The Rencontres d’Arles Festival is the world’s oldest photography festival and probably also the most visited. As its name suggests, it is an opportunity for encounters. Alongside the official program, dozens of spontaneous events, initiatives, and exhibitions emerge, both official and unofficial, transforming the town into a vibrant cultural organism. This year, I had the opportunity to experience the Rencontres d’Arles Festival through the eyes of someone who moves between their own artistic and pedagogical practice and above all as someone who believes that photography has the power not only to depict but also to shape the social context.

Connections Unbroken

#3 min Ivan Pinkava, Jan Durina , Josef Mach

Connections Unbroken

Fotograf zone ExhibitionBody

The body rightfully draws our attention as a two-way interface between the psychological and social aspects of our being. Its ambivalence, so captivating in the realm of visual arts, stems primarily from its dual role: acting as a screen that either separates individuals, reinforces their individuality, or connects them, thereby helping to shape the social and intimate spheres of our existence here and now.

Jan Durina – To Stop Watching a Catastrophe

#3 min Zuzana Janečková, Jan Durina

Jan Durina – To Stop Watching a Catastrophe

#43 CollectingProfilePerformance

Hidden behind a tree, bound, in the mist, flowing through an icy waterfall. Jan Durina is an intermedia artist who has, for several years now, worked with music, performance, and textiles. His most recent works feature expressive costumes and embroidered tapestries that reach into the territories of objects or environments. He is often mentioned in the contexts of photography, which continues to be a crucial element in his work, a thread that binds it all together from his beginnings as an artist.