Ritua(na)l by Luka Pešun has been selected as the winning work of Tvornica 2025.
The project was chosen by a professional jury consisting of Sonja Pregrad, Tihana Bertek, Tea Kantoci, Leo Vene, Ana Kovačić, Antonela Solenički, and Tea Matanović.
Congratulations to Luka, and thank you once again to everyone who responded to the call for submissions.
See you in December at 10ka!
About the project:
Douching is a practice that precedes sexual intercourse and is specific to anal sex among gay men. It is a preparatory part of intimacy that typically takes place in private and is often surrounded by secrecy.
Most people who engage in sexual relationships learn about this process through personal experience — a series of trials and errors — as they search for the method that suits them best. Individuals in the receptive role are often expected to have completed this preparation, which is frequently checked with the explicit question: “Are you clean?”
It’s time to speak openly about douching.
Portrait by: Buga Cvjetanović
Luka Pešun (Zagreb, 1990) uses the medium of photography in his artistic work to explore themes of identity, family, and belonging, focusing primarily on context and how its change alters interpretation. He studied fashion design at the Faculty of Textile Technology and graduated in photography from the Academy of Dramatic Art in 2019.
He was awarded the Rector’s Award in 2016 and has participated in various group and solo exhibitions.
His graduation project “Do It Within Your Four Walls” was exhibited in 2019 at Gallery f8 (ADU), at the Poreč Dox festival, and later in 2022 in Pula as part of the Proces 2022 event. A photograph from this series was displayed on a billboard in Zagreb in 2020 as part of the Ploha/Površina 6 program. A segment from the broader photographic series Domestic was shown in 2021 in Split as part of the qIZLOŽBE program and later that year in Pula at the invitation of the Proces association. The same work was presented to a Zagreb audience in 2022 at the 36th Salon of Young Artists, within the thematic section Parasites.
In 2024, he presented the work Dodir (Touch) at the group exhibition Then and Again. Rethinking Ritual in Contemporary Balkans in Thessaloniki, Greece. That same year, at the Spot Gallery, he exhibited the multimedia interactive work Wiped Clean, using VR technology and sourced archival and medical photographs.
Tvornica 2025 program was supported by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia and the City Office for Culture and Civil Society of the City of Zagreb.
