2026
By the Means at Hand
@MSU Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb
24 March – 21 June 2026
After my exhibition for the Croatian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale closed at the end of November 2024, I donated the whole project and its archive to the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb.
This is the documentation of the project’s presentation at the museum in 2026.
Photo: Vanja Babić
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From the exhibition announcement:
The exhibition offers insight into the project which Horvat created for the Croatian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, and which she donated to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb after the Biennale closed. For the project, Horvat invited some 200 international artists – friends and friends of friends, all living “as foreigners” in different countries around the world – to make and send to her small-scale artworks which in some way reflected on their experience of migration, of being a foreigner, of living in diaspora. For every work she received in Venice, Horvat sent to each artist a collage from the series she was making while living in the pavilion for the duration of the Biennale. All the artworks traveled to Venice and back via informal transport networks; in the bags and suitcases of friends, acquaintances, and sometimes strangers enlisted as couriers for the project.
The exhibition at the MSU presents a selection of works by artists who participated in the project, alongside extensive accompanying documentation that testifies to the project’s conception, development, and realization. By the Means at Hand activated complex processes of collaboration, exchange, and solidarity, and was realized through the participation of a large number of artists, friends, acquaintances, and visitors who transported the works between Venice and numerous cities around the world. It is precisely this network of relationships and trust, enabling the physical movement of artworks from hand to hand, that forms the central concept of the project.
Through this exceptional donation, the complete archive of By the Means at Hand enters the holdings of the Museum of Contemporary Art, enriching the institution’s collection with one of the most significant recent projects of Croatian contemporary art presented on the international scene. The donation is also notable for its structure: it is a complex artistic work that includes contributions by a large number of international artists, as well as rich documentation of the processes, communication, and exchanges that formed the foundation of the project. In this way, the Museum acquires not only an individual artwork, but an entire archive of a transnational artistic ecosystem, opening new possibilities for research, interpretation, and future presentations. With the project’s inclusion in the MSU collection, this unique artistic structure gains an institutional framework that ensures its long-term preservation, study, and reactivation. The donation thus goes beyond the act of transferring an artwork to a museum, becoming an important contribution to the development and documentation of contemporary artistic practice in Croatia, as well as of the international networks of collaboration at the heart of the project.
Credits:
Selection of artworks and archival material: Vlatka Horvat
Exhibition design and set-up: Vlatka Horvat
Organization and coordination of the exhibition: Morana Matković, Ana Škegro
Technical set-up: Dalibor Cicvara, Mirjana Grab, Igor Lukić, Aleksandar Milošević, Ivan Tudek, Filip Zima
Light design: Zdenko Zavalić, Luka Šubić
Wall texts: Vlatka Horvat
Design of wall texts: Martin Peranović
Conservation and restoration support: Mirta Pavić
Carpentry workshop: R3B (Venice), Umjetnički obrt Atelier MP (Zagreb)
Photo wallpaper print: Print shop Zinam
Photographs of the pavilion and video: Hugo Glendinning
Catalogue design: Tina Ivezić (Oaza)
Reader design: Maša Poljanec i Tina Ivezić (Oaza)
Processing of archival material: Vlatka Horvat, Kristina Bonjeković-Stojković (MSU), Sanela Tepić (MSU)
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More information about the project:
Croatian Pavilion in Venice documentation is here. You can download the Reader and various other materials from this link.
Project website is here.
The catalogue is available via co-publisher and distributor Archive Books here.
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The exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art has been realized with the support of the City of Zagreb and the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.
The Croatian Pavilion project at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, including the exhibition and the catalogue, was realized with financial support from the commissioning body, the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.
The Venice exhibition in 2024 was made possible with the generous support of the LUMA Foundation, in-kind support from EPSON and Prostoria, and an artist residency at Centrala.
The catalogue was supported by the ERSTE Foundation, with additional support from GAEP Gallery.
