A Bright Past Is Ahead of Us is a group exhibition curated by Ilija Prokopiev and Marija Hristova (PrivatePrint), first produced and presented at Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana, in June 2025. In 2026, the project continues at PrivatePrint Studio as a dispersed program of five small solo exhibitions presented throughout the year.

Klelija Zhivkovikj’s installation “One More Step, and We’re Coming Alive” explores aliveness as a radical form of resistance—an embodied response to systems of oppression, inherited shame, and emotional suppression. The installation centers on one of the artist’s most significant working methods: writing. Journal excerpts, research notes, and project proposal fragments from the past five years are transformed into a visual site-specific reading room. The work celebrates text as a process of self-discovery and writing as an act of togetherness and an opening toward otherness.

Klelija Zhivkovikj (b. 1989) is a transdisciplinary artist based in Skopje, North Macedonia. Formally trained across several design disciplines, her practice unfolds as a theoretical, material, and experiential inquiry into boundaries—physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual barriers through which we understand ourselves as beings who occupy space and establish contact with their surroundings.

A Bright Past Is Ahead of Us (2026 edition) is co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of North Macedonia and the Embassy of Spain in Skopje.

For the exhibition opening there was a talk between the artist and Dushica Lazova. The art talk program is curated by Jana Stardelova and organized in cooperation with Tiiiit! Inc. Skopje, and supported by Kvinna till Kvinna and the Embassy of Sweden in Skopje.

Photographs: Filip Bojkovski