Birds of Colombia at the School of Economics and Business

On Tuesday, March 5, 2024, the Gallery of the School of Economics and Business in Ljubljana was inhabited by the Birds of Colombia. We witnessed the opening of the exhibition of the illustrator Lidija Plestenjak, who graduated from the Department of Visual Communications at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design. The series of 25 extremely vivid popular science illustrations was created between 2018 and 2019 when the artist was in Colombia. Each bird is depicted in its extraordinary natural beauty, which she researched in detail, not only by observing birds in the wild but also with the help of books, videos and pictorial material she found online.

Love for animals, a varied inner world and self-reflection led Plestenjakova to the world of illustration and to the birds of Colombia, which she breathed life into through popular science illustration: “I recognize characteristics in various animals that I also have in myself, which is then also reflected in my works, like these birds. Without intending to, through the scientific illustration, where the objective depiction of reality and nature is in the foreground, the character that I perceived in individual birds still somehow came to the surface. The owl is serious and has deep, piercing eyes. The prey looks bolder and more dangerous. Herons tread slowly, gracefully and almost majestically across the marsh. Smaller birds are faster and jump around playfully. From this point of view, I was also attracted to the birds I painted, because of the character I perceived in their movements, colors and shapes.”

Plestenjak is currently working on her master’s thesis, in which she researches artificial intelligence technology and to what extent it is competitive with humans in the field of illustration. She is also developing a series of projects, from a series of witty illustrations with anthropomorphic animals to a possible author’s story with his illustrations. She says she is open to new opportunities in the future. “With each new project, I explore a new part of myself or develop, and acquire new skills. I work on very diverse projects because I like to meet new challenges, research, learn new skills and expand my knowledge, experience and develop further”, she added, which indicates the exceptional curiosity and research spirit she has already shown with illustrating a series of pictures of the Birds of Colombia.

The exceptional quality of the exhibited popular science illustrations was also confirmed by Hinko Smrekar’s award for popular science illustration at the 14th Slovenian Illustration Biennale. The award-winning work entitled Crested Owl is on display in the Gallery of the Faculty of Economics in the company of twenty other illustrations until March 28.

Danica Tajman, Efnews

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