AVA’s mission is to establish a strong, successful and recognisable institutional identity with a discernible contribution to the communities that we serve. It is an identity based on promoting individual visions and creative excellence. The strategy of learning and teaching provides sound foundations for practical creative procedures and for the history and theory of visual arts that prepare students for their creative professional careers in the fields of fine art, theatre, film, video and photography, or for continuing their studies at postgraduate level. This strategy emphasises experimentation, research, problem solving and interdisciplinary collaboration based on global information and awareness.

The graduation exhibition is not merely a presentation of finished works – it is a manifestation of intellectual and emotional journeys, of missteps, risks, research, and creative boldness. AVA believe that art is neither a service industry nor a tool for aestheticising social comfort. Rather, it is a means of understanding the world, of raising questions, reflecting, and at times, resisting. This openness to the unknown, the uncomfortable, and the ambiguous forms the foundation of our pedagogical practice.

The academic year brought many achievements as well as challenges. The students participated in exhibitions both at home and abroad, developed independent projects, collaborated with diverse communities, created interventions in public space, and courageously addressed questions of identity, politics, ideology, religion, ecology, memory, the body, and media reality. At the same time, together with the academic staff, they continually struggled to secure the basic conditions necessary to function in an environment where art and artistic education are all too often marginalised.

Text and images from www.ava.si