heatwave

The Heatwave includes a long term project, which in the first phase use cute plastic inflatable cushions and photographic images to critique consumerism and materialism. In the second phase, the projects attempt to directly and indirectly address the problem of excessive plastic use, its pollution of the planet, and ultimately propose solutions through creative reuse.

Heatwave started with an annual vacation by the sea and is basically a series of photographs that I have been creating for four years in a row (2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025) on the Slovenian coast and on Krk, describing my
anthropological view of spending time at the beach. I see mainstream spending time at the beach as a reflection of today’s consumer society. The series follows a mixture of humor and criticism. Between the lines and in the title, it also touches on or hints at the current and threatening topic of global warming, which also stems from the general consumerist mentality of humans.

In the second phase, Heatwave was created for the Slovenian art festival of DIY culture and recycling, Reciklart. The theme of the year the project was created was plastic, and since I had already presented my photographs in combination with an installation of inflatable summer cushions in my previous work, the idea for the second project came from this installation. I presented the same objects, or rather even more of these inflatable cushions, in
a different, even more spatial form, with the main object of this installation being a partially deflated inflatable pink flamingo, next to which, in a contrasting juxtaposition, were appropriated Instagram posts containing sympathetic, appealing, and entertaining photographs with inflatable flamingos. These posts from real Instagram profiles were later replaced by fictitious generated posts with similar motifs.