Lana Požlep
Opera for 14 Butterflies

Exhibition
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana
9 September–30 September 2026

Opera for 14 Butterflies (2025–2026) takes the disappearance of fourteen populations of four butterfly species from the Ljubljana Marshes as its point of departure, while also touching on the effects of tourism-driven gentrification on the people who live in the city. At the centre of the work is bureaucracy: its procedures, categories and blind spots, and the question of what happens when forms of life enter an institutional system that has no place for them. As part of the project, the artist repeatedly submitted forms for the deregistration of temporary residence to a local administrative office, entering the names of vanished butterfly species where a person’s name would normally appear. The gesture produced a bureaucratic contradiction: the forms could be completed, yet the subjects they referred to did not exist within the official register. These documents later became the basis for the opera’s musical score. Its libretto weaves together anonymous personal testimonies and online conversations about displacement, changing neighbourhoods and the transformation of residential areas. The work is presented as a spatial installation in which the gallery is transformed into something resembling a forgotten administrative office. Office furniture becomes both scenography and sound source, with Opera for 14 Butterflies resonating through the space itself. The installation invites the viewer into a sensory encounter with bureaucracy, memory and disappearance, drawing attention to the quiet loss of lives and habitats that form part of our shared environment.