With her immersive video installation Chora, artist Gaia Radić introduces a new chapter in the body of virtual worlds that perform as perceptual narratives and transform the spaces they inhabit into autopoietic worlding systems.
In Chora, the space waits in stillness for a visitor. Upon their arrival, a split point of view emerges within the expansive virtuality. Through two opposing apertures, a geological terrain, seemingly unbound by any specific site, begins to unfold. The world, comprised of interconnected lagoons, appears to overflow with an ethereal primordial liquid, keeping the space in constant flux.
This steady stream guides the visitor’s eye along the creased topology that is, in turn, slowly winding its way through the viewer as well. In this encounter, the viewer’s perceptual organs become channels through which the space reflects upon itself. Chora both shapes and is shaped by its material host and realises its generative potential when the physical and virtual realms meet through the viewer’s perception.
The heterotopic space functions as a sieve where one world is reflected and refracted into another, producing a self-referential reality that continually reforms itself. For as soon as self-formulation begins, dissipation follows. When the viewer leaves, the landscape settles and Chora returns to its dormant state until the arrival of a new body.
Gaia Radić graduated in Sculpture in 2023 from the Academy of Applied Arts in Rijeka and completed her MA in Video, Animation and New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in 2025 with highest honours. She is currently studying Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana.
Radić has exhibited at ten solo exhibitions and more than thirty group exhibitions in Croatia and Slovenia. Notable presentations include the 63rd Poreč Annale in collaboration with the curatorial collective KUĆĆA from Zagreb (2023), Ravnikar Gallery Space in Ljubljana (2024), the Media Mediterranea Festival organised by the Metamedij association in Pula (2024), a collaboration with Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art in Ljubljana (2024), and an exhibition at Filodrammatica Gallery organised by the association Drugo More (2024). She has also previously collaborated with the UR Institute from Dubrovnik (2021) and the siva/zona association from Korčula (2023), and exhibited at Karas Gallery in Zagreb (2023), Mavena Gallery in Split (2022), and Kortil Gallery in Rijeka (2022). She is the recipient of the second Erste Prize at the 36th Youth Salon (2022) and was a finalist for the Zlatna lubenica 6.0 Award for young artists (2022). Since 2024, she has been the youngest member of the Croatian Association of Visual Artists.
(Written by Maja Burja, Institute for Contemporary Art Aksioma)
Sound: Gašper Torkar
Tech: Oskar Kandare
Many thanks to: Czech National Supercomputing Center IT4Innovations, VSB – Technical University of Ostrava
Production: Institute for Contemporary Art Aksioma, Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia