January 23 – March 5, 2026
A new exhibition by the young visual artist and photographer Stefan Stefanovski, Scars, has been installed at the Gallery na Štrafti and can be viewed until March 5, 2026.
The project SCARS explores the Banat landscape as a space of ecological and social scars. In places where water once flowed and meadows bloomed, roads are now being dug. As new infrastructure is built, nature slowly transforms into an industrial environment. Banat is a region that has lacked access to clean drinking water for decades. Water, once the foundation of life, now becomes a symbol of absence and pollution. Through a visual experiment with light, color, and texture, the artist constructs a narrative of a landscape that is simultaneously real and fictional. The landscape transforms into a symbolic space, almost like another planet, where water becomes a metaphor for disappearance. Scars testify to a person searching for water, but in reality, searching for themselves within a vanishing space, reflecting humanity’s relationship with the land it has poisoned. The project connects personal experience with the local landscape, highlighting the problem of water pollution and nature loss as a universal challenge. The work raises questions about our relationship with water and the natural environment, prompting reflection on responsibility and the future of the world we live in.
Stefan Stefanovski, born in 1994 in Zrenjanin, is a visual artist and photographer. Since 2021, he has been a member of the Šok Zadruga team. At the Zrno Festival of Alternative Photography, he led workshops on creative processes in the darkroom. He has participated in 30 group exhibitions both in Serbia and abroad and has held three solo exhibitions in Novi Sad. His work has also been recognized internationally: he won first place at the international competition Third Element – Water in Rijeka, Croatia, in 2024, and at the 2025 World Biennale of Student Photography he received second place along with a special award for the best Serbian author.
His artistic practice is rooted in landscape, through which he explores the boundaries between the real and the fictional, the psychological and the imaginary space. He focuses particularly on overlooked elements and transformations within landscapes, with water often occupying a central role. Through his work, he investigates the relationship between humans and their natural environment, using landscape as a medium to convey stories of change, transience, and the interconnection between space and human experience.