Ana Zibelnik

The series is a reflection on something we all grapple with: dying. To make sense of what is constantly there – somewhere, sometimes latent, sometimes not so much –, to better understand and bear the “possibility of impossibility” we tend to listen to those more experienced, with similar experience or more troubled than us. We read books and watch films and lend an ear to the occasional wise man speaking. My own idea of how we encounter the constant presence of death is greatly indebted to some of those who examined the infinitely compelling and defining nature of mortality in detail and put it down in ink.

One of those who mark the conceptual backbone of my series is Martin Heidegger, who accurately noted that the paramount difference between man and everything else that lives, lies not in the ratio, but in mortality: “mortals are those who experience death as death”. In this sense, human beings are identified by the great absence. Not necessarily by fear of it or permanent anticipation, but by mere awareness of the fact – an awareness we are born with and is reinforced and revisited simply by living.

My series is an exploration into the subtle encounters with death during lifetime. I wish to construe a vast and intense fictional narrative that zooms in on what it means to be running out of time.

Ana Zibelnik (Ljubljana, 1995) is a photographer currently based in the Netherlands. She graduated summa cum laude from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana and is completing a master’s in Film and Photographic Theory at Leiden University. Over the last few years, she developed, published and exhibited her work both independently and under the If Slovenia Were project. Zibelnik’s practise focuses on the topic of time consciousness and is marked by a strong presence of literary works. In 2019, she won the Verzasca Nera Award for her series We Are The Ones Turning.