Ištvan Išt Huzjan: The Cankarian Wedge, exhibition

6 October–6 November 2022
MGLC Švicarija
Admission free

The creative and residential centre that was once a hotel now hides many stories of former hotel guests, artists and residents. One of them is "the mystery of Cankar's room". Huzjan opened the studio doors in the corridors of Švicarija and held them open with wedges of Podpeč marble. He entered the historical narrative of the spaces and connected the architecture of the building with artistic creation. With the help of a medium who can go into the afterlife, he also tried to unravel the "mystery of Cankar's room". Ivan Cankar was a hotel guest in the winter of 1909/10, when he began writing the socially critical essay The White Chrysanthemum there. It is not known in which room he stayed. It turns out that Cankar was torn between social life and writerly solitude, and his spirit was most present in two spaces. With artistic autonomy, the intervention stepped beyond the attested historical sources into the invisible past of Švicarija.

Curator of the commissioned work: Yasmín Martín Vodopivec 
Original concept: Ištvan Išt Huzjan
Execution: Ištvan Išt Huzjan and Jaka Babnik
Photographs: Jaka Babnik
Medium: Urška Puš 

The artist Ištvan Išt Huzjan got inspired by the "mystery of Cankar's room" during the preparation of the publication The Secret Life of Švicarija, the third in the Art in Tivoli Park series. The publication is edited and written by Yasmín Martín Vodopivec and Vesna Česen Rošker, it takes the reader through the history of the Ljubljana City Park gardens and the former entertainment scene to the edge of the forest below Rožnik, where the renovated Švicarija stands.