Kristian Kožul in conversation with Luja Šimunović and Klara Petrović
Join artist Kristian Kožul in conversation with art historians and independent curators, Luja Šimunović and Klara Petrović on Tuesday, September 2, at 7 PM, as they explore his work and themes from the current exhibition Degenerates, Monsters, and Traitors (1573).
Trotoar Talks is a series of discussions with artists, curators, and their guests related to exhibitions from the Trotoar program. Recordings of previous talks are available for listening on our SoundCloud channel.
About the Panelists
Kristian Kožul (b. 1975, Munich) is a Croatian artist whose interdisciplinary practice explores the visual language of power, the dynamics of desire, and the symbolic architecture of contemporary mythologies. Drawing on strategies of forensic aesthetics, baroque theatricality, and speculative fiction, Kožul constructs fantastical yet critically charged works that reflect the contradictions of the present moment. His sculptural objects and installations—often evoking themes of security, luxury, and ideological iconography—function as hyper-stylized and fetishized markers of collective anxiety and aspiration.
He has exhibited at MoMA PS1 New York, the Beijing International Art Biennale, the Jeju Biennale Korea, the IMPAKT Festival Utrecht, the Haifa Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, the National Museum of Modern Art Zagreb, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka, Galerie Anhava Helsinki, Exile Gallery Berlin, and Goff+Rosenthal Gallery New York, among others.
Kožul studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. His work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, the National Museum of Modern Art Zagreb, and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka.
Luja Šimunović is a curator and co-founder of KUĆĆA, a collective and organisation based in Zagreb, Croatia focused on emergent artistic practices that experiment with non-normative and relational modes of feeling, thinking, and world-making. Since 2022, she is also a lecturer and researcher employed at the Department of Art History at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. She holds an MA in Art History and Comparative Literature (Faculty of Humanities, Zagreb) and is currently pursuing a PhD on the topic of digitally mediated subjectivity and fiction in contemporary art. Luja has been working as a curator, educator and producer since 2015, collaborating with many different institutions and organisations in Croatia and abroad. KUĆĆA was founded in 2021 together with curators Jurica Mlinarec and Klara Petrović. They have curated the 36th Youth Salon (2022), the 63rd Poreč Annale (2023), and are preparing the 60th Zagreb Salon (2025). They also run a project space in Zagreb where they organise exhibitions and run a residency programme.
Klara Petrović is one of three in the Zagreb based curatorial collective KUĆĆA and leads a double life as a social media influencer. She holds an MA in Art History and Comparative Literature from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. She has been active in the independent cultural scene since 2016, working as a curator and a project manager working mainly on annual art festivals, including the curatorial collective KONTEJNER (2016 – 2021), Organ Vida (2018 – 2020) and the student-oriented website Kulturflux (2015) which she co-founded. As part of KUĆĆA, she has co-curated the 36th Youth Salon in 2022 on the topic of Parasites, the 63rd Poreč Annale and is currently working on the upcoming 60th Zagreb Salon. Her interests include research based contemporary art practices and experimenting with new models of collaborative practice in art and culture.