Topoli
©EP2026
Breze v jeseni, Topoli and Macesen are images from the photo series ‘Impressions’ created in 2010 by Slovenian visual artist Nika Autor, whose work explores asylum and migration policies, workers’ rights and the politics of memory. In keeping with the artist’s practice, these images reconstruct collective memory and personal narratives, and explore the ‘silenced’ present. They also reflect a considerable part of her artistic trajectory, which has been characterised by experimental videos and documentaries.
These images are stills from footage, belonging to the video archives of Radio Televizija Slovenija (Radio-Television Slovenia), which was captured by police thermographic cameras used for territory surveillance on Slovenia’s borders. Presenting them outside of that context, with new titles, Autor aims to demonstrate how such images contribute to the criminalisation and victimisation of refugees and migrants.
In this context, this type of police photography depicts human presence as a disturbance, producing new images of the living environment but also setting the boundaries of a discourse on illegality. Through the resulting images, the artist weaves layers of meaning, exploring what movement means in terms of nation-states, and how it connects with the realities of border violence and non-belonging. The stills of these individuals as shapeless and nameless beings not only serve to criminalise them, but also actively and specifically identify them as ‘other’.
Each of the artworks in Autor’s series turns the natural landscape into scenes of challenging, dehumanising rhetoric around migration, and in doing so, she explores the contrast between the migrant situation and the idealised landscape motifs of impressionism. The images Breze v jeseni, Topoli and Macesen are similar to impressionist paintings. Indeed, they carry the names of famous Slovenian impressionist paintings by Rihard Jakopič and Ivan Grohar.
Through this photo series, Autor re-stages idealised depictions of the Slovenian landscape. Through this re-staging and the newly ‘disturbed’ landscape, Autor provides a social commentary on the violence, which is inscribed in the visible boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Her work holds a mirror up to society and highlights the way in which dominant narratives can manipulate the perceptions of space and its relationship with the human condition.
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Slovenia
Topoli
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2019
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Value of culture
(…) the intrinsic value of culture and of artistic expression should always be preserved and promoted and that artistic creation is at the heart of cooperation projects. European Parliament legislative resolution of 28 March 2019 on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the Creative Europe programme (2021 to 2027) and repealing Regulation (EU) No 1295/2013 (COM(2018)0366 – C8 0237/2018 – 2018/0190(COD))
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2020
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2021
Acquisition programme of works of art from Germany, Poland, Spain and Sweden following the Bureau decision from 25 November 2019
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2022
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Acquisition programme of works of art from Czechia, Italy, Malta and Slovakia following the Bureau decision from 25 November 2019
Roberta Metsola
Roberta Metsola serves as President of the European Parliament since January 2022
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2023
Croatia joins the euro area
Croatia is the 20th country to join the euro area, replacing the kuna with the euro as its currency. In order to be part of the euro area, a country has to fulfill a set of economic conditions, which include having a stable exchange rate and a low inflation rate. Seven EU countries still use their national currencies: Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Sweden.
Acquisition programme of works of art from Cyprus, Estonia, Malta, Romania and The Netherlands following the Bureau decision from 25 November 2019
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2024
Acquisition programme of works of art from Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia and Finland following the Bureau decision from 25 November 2019
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2025
Acquisition programme of works of art from Denmark, Latvia and Slovenia following the Bureau decision from 25 November 2019