SEM exhibition - Life of the Skušek Collection
On May 29, 2024, the exhibition Asia in the Heart of Ljubljana: Life of the Skušek Collection curated by members of the bilateral project was opened at the SEM. The exhibition shows a broad selection of the collected objects. While the display of objects is of course fundamental to an exhibition in general, the focus in the present show is not so much on the single pieces. Instead, the exhibition focuses on the recreation of the atmosphere of the former lived-in museum. The contextualisation of the collection with their owners – or perhaps the actors on the stage, which was created by the arrangement of pieces – is the over-arching idea of the curators.
But even the open design of the exhibition does not allow what had been a key aspect when the collection had been assembled as a true lived-in museum at the times of the Skušeks: direct interaction or even close-up inspection of the objects. While such distance between visitor and artefact is of minor importance in the case of large-scale pieces of furniture, it clearly creates quite some dissatisfaction when it comes to smaller items such as the metalworks.
In the exhibition, the set of Buddhist sculptures is arranged in a segregated space as it had been documented on several archival photographs. Thereby, the overall visual impact of the setting is recreated, but the distance between the single metalworks and the visitor is enlarged – and the details escape the visitor‘s eye.
To make the artistic quality and iconographic details perceivable, the largest piece of the group, a depiction of a wrathful tantric Buddhist deity and his partner in embrace (Vajrabhairava and Vajravetālī), was re-created and visualized in augmented reality (AR). On a tablet the visitors can virtually navigate themselves closely to the sculpture and view the many details for the 34-armed deity and his female partner.
For more details on the technical aspects of the exhibition, please >> CLICK HERE <<