Photo: Lojze Kalinsek
Dogs Are Welcome
The exhibition project Dogs Are Welcome was developed during Norwegian artist and printmaker Trude Johansen's second residency in Slovenia. She first introduced her work to Slovenian audiences in 2018 at the International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC) in Ljubljana, within the framework of a collaboration between Nordic Artists' Centre Dale and the International Centre of Graphic Arts. In 2026, she returned to Slovenia as a participant in the Izlake-Zagorje Painting Colony, one of the oldest painting colonies in Europe. This exhibition opens a space for reflection on temporary dwelling, everyday rituals, and the forms of coexistence that connect people, animals, and communities.
The starting point of the exhibition is Johansen's artist's book Dogs and Dinosaurs (2018), in which she documented impressions and observations from her residency in Slovenia through a series of prints. Conceived as an intimate visual diary of encounters with an unfamiliar environment, the project is revisited at Mitnica Gallery of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering as a site for reflecting upon memory, place, and lived experience.
The central motif of the exhibition emerges from the seemingly ordinary practice of walking dogs. Notes, observations, and collected texts are transformed into repeating graphic patterns, produced through screen-printing on textile. Through repetition, these motifs generate rhythmic visual structures that extend beyond the limits of a single image, evoking the continuity of everyday routines. Within them, the dog appears in its multiple roles: guardian, companion, confidant, and fellow traveller. At the same time, the works draw attention to the significance of shared outdoor spaces, particularly green areas that serve as sites of movement, play, and relaxation for animals.
Johansen approaches everyday habits as broader patterns of living. Dog walking is not understood merely as a routine activity, but as a form of social and spatial interaction that directs individuals beyond their habitual perspectives. Pauses, encounters, and spontaneous conversations between dog walkers create temporary communities and generate new ways of experiencing the surrounding environment. Within this network of relationships, the artist recognizes the potential of a community grounded in shared space, attention, and experience.
The exhibition thus explores the intersection of everyday life, interspecies coexistence, and collective forms of belonging. Repetitive graphic patterns become visual metaphors for the social bonds that emerge through seemingly insignificant gestures and daily rituals. In them, Johansen identifies possibilities for dialogue, mutual understanding, and shared ways of inhabiting the world.
Trude Johansen (b. 1981) is a Norwegian artist and printmaker based in Moss. Although primarily specializing in woodcut printmaking, her artistic practice encompasses a wide range of media, including the appropriation of objects and images, publishing practices, and text-based works.
The exhibition was realized within the project Intercultural and Intergenerational Creative Inspiration (University of Ljubljana Development Fund). Members of the Zagorje ob Savi Pensioners' Association actively participated in the creation of the project, contributing to the development of the repeating graphic patterns and enriching the exhibition through intergenerational dialogue and collaboration.
Boris Beja
docent
Photo: Lojze Kalinsek