In the photobook So You Will Always Remember, artist Lara Deotto Bat turns to memories of her childhood, exploring a specific, evolving relationship with a system that, in a particular place and time, represented a safe, carefree and seemingly endless childhood.
Observing her surroundings and recording images through the medium of photography allows her to repeatedly return to the past and to gradually comprehend the dynamics of family relationships. These are in constant flux, representing the gradual process of becoming independent to a growing individual.
The photobook follows the internal logic of a family photo album; the author conceived it as a collection of impressions from the domestic environment, characterised by spontaneous portraits of close family members and deliberately highlighted everyday banalities. The photographs are accompanied by five short, handwritten texts, for example about a family holiday or the relationship with a caring mother. In relation to childhood memories, these anecdotal notes form a parallel narrative that complements the photobook’s sequence while also emphasising the inevitable gap between the author’s projection of the past on the one hand and the experience of the present on the other. The artist’s confrontation with the concept of transience and a sense of instability results in a work that, in a very natural, sincere and at times analytical way, brings the intimate sphere of domesticity and a specific experience of memory closer to the viewer – an experience whose perception is constantly shifting.
Lara Deotto Bat (2003) is completing her undergraduate studies in photography at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. Her work stems from an interest in collective behavioural patterns and social structures, within which she examines notions of everyday banality. She translates these interests into her artistic practice by foregrounding the relationship between individual experience and the broader social context. Although her primary mode of expression is photography, her practice remains open to a range of different media approaches. She has taken part in group exhibitions at DobraVaga Gallery (#newcatch and #photography, 2025), Betetto Hall at the University of Ljubljana Academy of Music (Sonic Heterotypies, 2025), as well as within the exhibition series PONJAVA (2025, 2024) and Photovisions at the Youth Culture Festival in Nova Gorica (2025, 2024).
Curated by: Maša Žekš
Free admission.
3. 2.–28. 2. 2026
Organisation: DobraVaga / Kino Šiška.
