Born on 9th March 1955 in Celje. She is a graduate of the Faculty of Economics in Ljubljana. Her field of interest covers different media: performance, installation, video nad theatre costume design. She works as a frelance artist. "With her work the artist proves that gesamtkunstwerk is the ultimate artistic expression. In her work a tension between life and death is staged to nearly tangible presence. We experience her work sensually on the performances in vast industrial halls, factories, stone-pits or on projections in full darkness, filled with sound or/and images that avoid any typological definitions. Experiencing her events leave deep sensual imprints on us. The images would appear to us in the true senses of this word. They appear to us as phantoms much later, after we are hardly able to remember the time and place where they inhabited us – in the sleeping dreams or the dreaming with eyes wide opened. Ema Kugler is a master of phantoms." (Jurij Krpan, Explenation of Prešeren Fund Award, 2008). Ema Kugler is recepient of Prešeren Award 2023.
www.ema-kugler.si
Not Yet Written Stories. Women Artists’ Archives Online (2019–2022)
Production: ZANK & VPK, 2019
The genetic code forces man in reproduction. A newborn has no choice. Without her/his will, it is sorted to this world and as a completely helpless creature in the dressage of civilizational norms, which are determined by those in the position of power ... Bu...
Production: Zank & VPK, 2009
The video film is an investigation on man and his smallness in front of nature and time, the story is told by a voice-over narrator, with no dialogues between the characters. The camera slowly moves horizontally in panoramic views showing bright wide dese...
Production: ZANK / Ljudmila, 2005
Experimental video is made after sound recording of Le Grand Macabre opera, recorded live at the Parisian Theatre du Chatelet in fabruary 1998, performed by London Sinfonietta Voices Philharmonic Orchestra. Composer György Ligeti, avant-gardist of th...
Production: Zavod ZANK / VPK, Cankarjev dom, RTV Slovenija, 2003
»The Phantom« is a film about death that does not ask, »Who am I?«, but »Have I ever really been there ... in my life? Have I ever really lived? Wasn’t everything just an illusion, an illusion of a false existence? Is i...
Production: ZANK, VPK, Cankarjev dom , 2000
This video features no words, only music and images. Ema Kugler describes the moving images as: “They are like a dark, surrealist dance of everyman with his own death. I have seen all these images. They came from the darkness of my subconsciousness,...
Production: Forum Ljubljana, VPK & TV Slovenija, 1999
Urbanity is finally erased with mythological rituals, which is defined by the title of the video film: menhir, a large upright standing stone from the Neolithic Period which was used in sacred rituals. A man and a woman are Adam and Eve who are formed bef...
Production: Forum Ljubljana & VPK, 1997
The artist continues with her main preoccupations: the relationship between a man and a woman, the irruption of the mythical into the rituals of everyday life. The video film uses the numerous potentials of electronic manipulation of the picture. The fine...
Production: Forum Ljubljana & VPK, 1996
Video Taiga is made after eponymous performance carried out at the international festival of contemporary arts City of women in October 1995 in Ljubljana. The viewer enters a dark atmosphere, dictated by dramatic vocal-electronic music, threatening anthro...
Production: V.S. Video / Forum Ljubljana, VPK & Viba film, 1995
The artist insists on the duality of human nature: the same dreadfulness is part of both the mythical and the real world. The duality is explicitly presented by means of electronic effects that can petrify a human face, or wall-up a human body in a few se...
Production: V.S. Video, Forum Ljubljana, VPK, 1993
Mythology in the video works by Ema Kugler is inscribed in rituals of everyday life; this time it is the theme of Hydra with many facets. The theme is represented by the separate scenes featuring human figures in leather costumes (created by the artist he...