solo exhibition
Space 10ka, GMK, Šubićeva 29
Opening: Tuesday, December 16, 2025, 7:00 PM
Exhibition dates: until January 13, 2026
Gallery hours: Tue–Fri: 4–7 PM / Sat: 10 AM–1 PM
Free admission
Galerija Miroslav Kraljević invites you to the opening of “Did you prep?”, a solo exhibition by Luka Pešun, the winning project of the Tvornica 2025 open call for production and exhibition, curated by Antonela Solenički and Tea Matanović. The exhibition opens on Tuesday, December 16, 2025, at 7 PM. The exhibition explores the practice of douching as a complex, often unspoken intimate ritual that circulates within the queer community through experience, conversation, and collective learning. Pešun approaches the topic without sensationalism, foregrounding knowledge, preparation, vulnerability, and bodily autonomy.
What follows is the exhibition foreword.
Foreword
Luka Pešun’s exhibition “Did you prep?” explores the practice of douching—an intimate, often hidden and informally learned cleansing ritual that precedes anal sex, particularly prevalent among gay men. Although widely known, this practice exists outside institutional knowledge: it takes place behind closed doors, without clear instructions, and is most often shaped through improvisation. Early experiences are almost always marked by clumsiness, fear of making mistakes, shame, and the sense that the practice belongs to the realm of the unspoken.
Within queer communities, the seemingly simple question—“Did you prep?”—functions both as a practical check and as a symbol of an entire system of unarticulated norms. Behind it lies invisible preparation, both physical and psychological, that precedes intimacy. This opens up a series of questions: who bears the responsibility of preparation, how standards of “cleanliness” are formed, how knowledge circulates when it is fragmented and rooted in experience rather than formal education? Initial encounters are often awkward and confusing—and it is precisely these experiences that become the starting point for an artistic articulation of learning through doing.
Although the artist primarily works with photography, in this exhibition he deliberately moves away from his dominant medium. This shift is not a rejection of photography, but rather a selective activation of its principles: the concept of mise-en-scène and carefully constructed framing is translated into the gallery space. The environment functions almost like a photographic set—a space designed to be inherently photogenic, inviting visitors to document it and become part of their own visual narrative.
At the center of the installation is the relationship between signifier and signified: what photography is to its subject, casts of sex toys become to the toys themselves. These forms—often exaggerated, disproportionate, or abstracted into imagined organic shapes—are stripped of their original function and transformed into fragile sculptures. They are no longer tools of pleasure, but their symbolic doubles. In this way, Pešun engages with the semiotics of intimacy: what does an object mean once it ceases to function as an object and becomes a sign? What remains when function is removed and only a trace is left—a space for reflection and discussion?
The exhibition is conceived as an ambient installation that approaches its subject not through taboo, but through the affective atmosphere of first encounters with douching: a sense of hazy confusion, lack of knowledge, vulnerability, and curiosity about one’s own pleasure. The process, imbued with a certain mystique, resembles a labyrinth—where the goal is known, but the path remains uncertain. The artist creates a space that connects childhood and adult play: the gallery transforms into a kind of labyrinth made of towels, reminiscent of those we built as children. This imagery of shelter and safety allows visitors to relax, evoking playfulness and excitement.
The bed functions as an interactive element within the exhibition. Visitors are invited to lie down or sit on it, using it as a place of rest and reflection on their own bodily rituals. Next to it is a diary—a space for recording personal experiences, doubts, questions, or anonymous confessions. Like an analog, interactive questionnaire, the diary invites dialogue: each new entry responds to previous ones, and visitors can read, reflect on, or learn from others’ writings. In this way, the community itself generates the knowledge it lacks.
The entire environment—the presence of water as a reference to rinsing, the bed as an installation subtly referencing Félix González-Torres, a series of white towels, the scent of “freshly washed,” and fragile casts of toys—forms a choreography of ritual: a spatial language of douching. Within this space, fissures open between private and public, spontaneity and ritual, cleanliness and “uncleanliness.” The exhibition emphasizes that douching is neither a prerequisite for anal sex nor a guarantee of a “clean” experience. Unpredictability is always part of the body—shit happens.
Rather than romanticizing or focusing on taboo, “Did you prep?” approaches douching as a complex practice that can be awkward, chaotic, impractical, yet deeply intimate. It is an act that involves preparation, planning, a relationship with one’s own body, excitement, and a desire for connection—even with oneself. In doing so, the exhibition contributes to a discourse on sexual education that is largely absent from institutions and instead transmitted within queer communities through conversation, trial and error, and experiential learning.
“Did you prep?” thus becomes an invitation to openness and destigmatization. The exhibition advocates for the right to knowledge, safety, and bodily autonomy, approaching sexuality as a space of curiosity, learning, exploration, and community. Luka Pešun creates a space of understanding in which hidden and intimate experiences become visible and shared—and above all, acceptable. Without shame and without compromise.
About the Artist
Luka Pešun (Zagreb, 1990) works primarily with photography to explore themes of identity, family, and belonging, focusing on how shifts in context transform meaning and interpretation. He studied fashion design at the Faculty of Textile Technology and graduated in photography from the Academy of Dramatic Art in 2019. He is a recipient of the Rector’s Award (2016).
His diploma project Do It Within Your Own Four Walls was exhibited in 2019 at Gallery f8 (Academy of Dramatic Art) and as part of the Poreč Dox festival, and again in 2022 in Pula within the Proces 2022 program. A photograph from the diploma series was displayed on a billboard in Zagreb in 2020 as part of the Ploha/Površina 6 program. Works from his broader photographic cycle Domestic were exhibited in Split (qIZLOŽBE, 2021) and later that year in Pula at the invitation of the association Proces. In 2022, the same work was presented to the Zagreb audience at the 36th Youth Salon within the thematic section Parasites.
In 2024, he presented the work Touch at the group exhibition Then and Again. Rethinking Ritual in Contemporary Balkans in Thessaloniki, Greece. The same year, he exhibited the multimedia interactive work Wiped Clean at Gallery Spot, using VR technology and archival and medical imagery. Wiped Clean won the 13th edition of the international Different Worlds 2025 competition, as part of which it was included in the finalists’ group exhibition at Gallery Photon in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Programme Information
Title: “Did you prep?”
Artist: Luka Pešun
Curators: Antonela Solenički & Tea Matanović
Foreword: Antonela Solenički
Production & creative collaborator: Ivana Prodan
Technical setup: Stipo Smiljčić
Dates: December 16, 2025 – January 13, 2026
Programme: Tvornica 2025
Acknowledgements: Davor Lulić, Ivan Gaborović
Production: Generator multidisciplinarnih koprodukcija (GMK)
Programme supported by: Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, City of Zagreb
GMK supported by: Kultura Nova Foundation, INA d.d.
