"I paint with movement,dance with colors,and write with the body."
Nina Stopar, 2025
Artist statement
Everything is much easier when moved, danced, and conciseness is embodied.
I experience the creation as a dance with colors. A chaotic, expressive, playful dance and profound healing meditation.
Surrendering to the calling of the creation, to its movement, shapes and colors, is how I paint. Body intuition and body intelligence are overtaking the process. Creation is a dance, where the body becomes a brush reflected on canvas through shapes, the soul a palette reflected in the colors, and the spirit is the motion, presented in the empty, negative space between the color and shape.
But there is no separation between the creator and the creation as there is no separation between body, soul and spirit in motion. Surrendering to what needed to be painted, letting it all go, putting it on the canvas – are one of the most potent qualities one can gain in these chaotic times, to rediscover their authentic Self.
I experience the movement as an uncensored area of human life that has not been yet indoctrinated by the consumer society. However, the body is always interconnected with other bodies. A sensitive body is a vessel of emotions, reflections, memories, pain, sorrow, joy, compassion and love, it is a totality with its own intelligence and intuition. The purest and strongest form of perception, the singularity from where the truth arises. Thus, I paint with my body. Body paintings are subversive form of art as well as the performance of painting with body is. I attach my body painting to the legacy of action painting and abstract expressionism.
Curriculum Vitae
I am Nina Stopar (1982), a professor of Slovenian language and philosophy, poet, visual artist, and dancer. I graduated from the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana in 2007 and completed my MA studies at the same institution in 2016 with the thesis Contemporary Art in Philosophical Reflection under the mentorship of Dr. Lev Kreft. After teaching for almost ten years, I transitioned to the field of visual arts and, in 2021, earned my Master’s degree in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana. My thesis, Body Painting as a Spiritual Change in the Time of Indeterminacy, was completed under the mentorship of Prof. Sergei Kapus and Dr. Lev Kreft.
Since then, I have been engaged in various creative practices, ranging from classical painting to body painting and performance, as well as dance and poetry.
As a teacher of the 5Rhythms movement practice, I believe that movement is the gateway to creativity, abstraction, and the artistic self. I explore abstraction as the dance of intuition within the body in motion.
I live and work in Žerjav, Črna na Koroškem, and Ljubljana.
"Between poetry, painting, and dance – that’s where I find myself."
Solo exhibitions
2025 The encounter at the edge of self, ArtKIT, KIBLA, Maribor, Slovenia
2024 The faces of stillness, The Carinthian Central Library of Dr. Franc Sušnik, Slovenia
2022 Meeting of the body as touching the memory in the print of color, Ravne Gallery, Slovenia
2021 Renewed landscape, Črna na Koroškem, Slovenia
2020 Grošljeva gallery, Prevalje, Slovenia
Group exhibitions
2023 ART EXPO, International art fair, AAMI corporation, Brdo pri Kranju, Slovenia
2023 ETIKETE, International bienale of art, Novo mesto, Slovenia
2023 AIR ROOTS, Culterim Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2023 MEMBRANE OF PRESENCE, ZDSLU, Galerija Breg, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2023 INTERNATIONAL ART COLONY, 71st Festival Ljubljana, Križanke, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2023 MAJSKI SALON, ZDSLU 23, Trbovlje, Slovenia
2022 EX-TEMPORE PIRAN 22, Piran City Gallery, Slovenia
2022 MAJSKI SALON, ZDSLU 22, Kibla Portal, Maribor, Slovenia
2021 A TILE IN PARADISO, permanent exhibition, Imperia, Italy
2021 BARCELONA CONTEMPORARY, Itsliquit, Spain
2021 NOTHING REALLY MATTERS, Rossocinabro Gallery, Rome, Italy
2021 BODY LANGUAGE, Itsliquit, Venice, Italy
Poetry publication
Poems published in Mentor, 2024
Poems published in Odsevanja, 2024
Poems published in Apokalipsa magazine, 2023
Poems published in the Nebulae magazine, 2022
Poems published in the Apokalipsa magazine, 2021
Poetry collections
Kisses and Words, 2022
Performances
2022 The birth of the painting: the blooming of the collective body, multimedia performance, participants Dominik Mahnič (video), Marko Batista (sound), Cirkulacija 2
2022 Sounds of metabolised breath, musical and poetic performance, Jure Praper (sound), Galerija Ravne, KGLU
Awards
2022 Extempore Piran, international painting extempore, major purchase price
Artist residency:
2023, 4 months, Dahlewitz, Berlin, Germany
2023, International Artist Colony at 71. Festival Ljubljana, Slovenia
2020, 7 months, London, Erasmus practical exchange
