Fosilno sonce (in eng. Tar Star) is not a book that documents an exhibition so much as it extends it—quietly, insistently—into the reader’s hands. Published in connection with the exhibition of the same name at Cukrarna in Ljubljana, the book accompanies the collaborative practice of Aleksandra Vajd and Anetta Mona Chişa, artists known for examining photography beyond the image, as a material and ecological process.
At its core, Fosilno sonce reflects on photography as something suspended between the depths of the Earth and the radiance of the Sun. Bitumen, cables, screens, and image-bearing surfaces point to the fossilised origins of contemporary technology, situating photographic production within extractive, planetary systems rather than purely cultural ones. The publication echoes this approach, treating photography not as a neutral medium but as a layered, geological construct shaped by energy, time, and matter.
The catalogue is wrapped in a fluorescent dust jacket that unfolds into a poster of the solar corona and its energetic fields.
The catalogue is wrapped in a fluorescent dust jacket realized out of Fluo Poster Yellow 90 g/m² that unfolds into a poster of the solar corona and its energetic fields, extending the exhibition’s narrative beyond the catalogue itself. Featuring four different types of paper, including also Munken Lynx 90 g/m², Arctic Volume White 115 g/m² and Garda Gloss Art 130 g/m², the publication is further distinguished by gradient transitions on the cover in the hues of sunrise and sunset, lending it a distinctive visual character.
Published by Cukrarna / MGML as part of its exhibition catalogue programme, Fosilno sonce functions as both a record and a conceptual object. It translates the spatial installation into a tactile format, allowing readers to trace the artists’ thinking across ecological, technological, and symbolic registers. Like the exhibition itself, the book invites a slower reading—one that acknowledges the entanglement of human vision with non-human processes.
In the understated spirit of Vajd and Chişa’s practice, Fosilno sonce resists spectacle. Instead, it positions photography as a fossil-in-the-making: a medium shaped by sunlight, mined resources, and time scales far exceeding our own. It is a publication that asks not only how images are made, but what they are made of—and what they carry forward.
Images © Cukrarna Gallery