Slovak photographer Dominika Jackuliaková has long explored the memory of the landscape, its transformations, and mobility, subjecting them to introspective analysis. In her project R2, she captures the construction of the final missing section of the highway near her hometown of Lučenec in southern Slovakia.

Modern infrastructure shortens time and distance, replacing walking as a premodernist way of experiencing the landscape. The artist thus views the concrete structure through both an aesthetic and an anthropological lens. The highway represents for her a vehicle for returning home and a confrontation with her own roots. At the same time, she perceives a sociological vacuum in this space—a realm where isolation persists within former village life, even if no longer politically enforced.

Here, the highway becomes a true "non-place," which is defined by the tension between a transit element and a memory artifact. Through black-and-white photographs, the project illustrates the infrastructural transformation of the landscape's visual character, the impact of human activity, and a vanishing local identity.

Dominika Jackuliaková (*1989) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (VŠVU) in Bratislava. In 2023, she received the Urbanautica Institute Award, and in 2019, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship. Her work has been exhibited at the Slovak National Gallery, Kurzor Gallery in Prague, and Filter Space in Chicago, among others. Her photographic series are included in the collections of the SNG in Bratislava and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.

Curator: Adam Macko