Aleksandra Vajd is a photographer who doesn’t work with the medium of photography in the traditional sense, but rather explores ways of expanding her artistic scope while questioning conventional approaches to creating art. Her projects are structured as dialogues, which leads her to collaborate with a range of other artists, including Dominik Lang on the exhibited work The Self Is the Self Through the Other.

The work draws on the legacy of Jože Plečnik, one of the most significant Slovenian architects of the 20th century, offering a reinterpretation of his obelisk in Lány, created in 1927 as a memorial to those who fell in the First World War. The monumental granite monolith, engraved with the names of the victims, symbolically links collective memory with architectural space. It consists of three separate columns joined by a copper band, through which the columns support one another. The work speaks to the individual, whose identity is shaped through their relationship to the community, while also reflecting on a community whose strength relies on every individual within it.