Nika Oblak & Primož Novak at Festival 404 and Utoro Art Festival

Nika Oblak & Primož Novak at Festival 404 and Utoro Art Festival
7-9 October 2025
404 International Festival of Art and Technology, MC Gallery, Manhattan, New York, USA
10 October–10 November 2025
Utoro Art Festival, Goethe-Institut Villa Kamogawa, Kyoto, Japan

Nika Oblak & Primož Novak will present their work at two important international festivals this fall: the 404 International Festival of Art and Technology in New York (MC Gallery, Manhattan, 7-9 October 2025) and the Utoro Art Festival in Kyoto (Goethe-Institut Villa Kamogawa, 10 October–10 November 2025).

The artist duo will be guests at the exhibition in New York with their project Balance. The festival will also be presented in the context of lectures at the famous New York theater club “The Players NYC”, which will take place from 3 to 5 October 2025. The event is being held in collaboration with the Institute of General Semantics, an internationally recognized non-profit institution founded in 1938 that researches the influence of language and symbolic systems on thought and society and is known for its lectures by outstanding theorists and the renowned academic journal ETC: A Review of General Semantics.

Founded in 2004 in the city of Rosario, Festival 404 is the oldest media art festival in Argentina. Since its first edition, it has been held in a different location around the world every year. This year, the 22nd edition of the festival will take place in New York. So far, 42 cultural centers, universities and public institutions in thirteen countries have hosted the event, from Argentina to Italy, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Taiwan, Russia and Colombia. It has been supported by renowned institutions such as the Mondriaan Foundation (Netherlands), the National University of the Arts in Taiwan and UNESCO, to name but a few.

After this appearance, the artist duo will participate in the Utoro Art Festival in Kyoto with the project The Kiss, which deals with the themes of migration, residence and hope, as the Kyoto district of Utoro is the place of residence of Koreans who were forcibly mobilized during the Japanese occupation. The duo was invited to participate because their work looks at everyday life through the prism of the changing media landscape and reflects the challenges and experiences faced by today’s migrants and society as a whole.

The Utoro Art Festival presents works by artists from Japan, South Korea, Iran, Germany, Denmark and Slovenia. Among them are the internationally renowned Iranian artist Ghazel (French Order of Arts and Letters, Venice Biennale etc.), the Korean visual research band IkkibawiKrrr (Documenta 15, Aichi Triennale etc.) and the Japanese artist Shimada Yoshiko (MOMA PS1, Mori Art Museum etc.).

The exhibition and accompanying events will take place at the Utoro Peace Memorial Museum, the Goethe-Institut Villa Kamogawa, the Kyoto Museum for World Peace, Ritsumeikan University and Doshisha University. To kick off the festival, a discussion series, the Utoro Forum, was held at the Utoro Peace Memorial Museum in Kyoto in spring 2024.

Nika Oblak and Primož Novak (Ljubljana, Slovenia) have been working as an artist duo in the field of contemporary art since 2003. After finishing their studies at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, they both continued their education in Berlin. Their works have been showcased at prominent contemporary art venues all over the world, including the Sharjah Biennial (UAE), Japan Media Arts Festival in Tokyo (JP), Istanbul Biennial (TR), Biennale Cuvée in Linz (AT), Transmediale in Berlin (DE), FILE Sao Paulo (BR) etc. They have received numerous grants and awards, including the CYNETART awarded by the Hellerau Transmedia Academy in Dresden (DE), an honorary mention at Biennale WRO (PL), the 2017 White Aphroid Award by ACE KIBLA in Maribor (SI) and Rihard Jakopic honorable mention, highest national award for visual arts (SI). They live and work in Ljubljana.

Links:
- 404 Festival Instagram page, https://www.instagram.com/404festivalofficial/
- 404 Festival Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/404Festival
- 404 Festival, website, https://www.404festival.com/?lang=en
- Utoro Art Festival Instagram page, https://www.instagram.com/utoroartfestival/
- Utoro Art Festival website, http://www.utoroartfestival.com/en/