* The exhibition opening will take place on Tuesday, March 24, 2026, at 6 PM. *
The Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb invites you to the opening of the exhibition By the Means at Hand by Vlatka Horvat, which will be held on Tuesday, March 24 at 6 PM at the MSU. The exhibition offers insight into the project which Horvat created for the Croatian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, and which she donated to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb after the Biennale closed. For the project, Horvat invited some 200 international artists – friends and friends of friends, all living “as foreigners” in different countries around the world – to make and send to her small-scale artworks which in some way reflected on their experience of migration, of being a foreigner, of living in diaspora. For every work she received in Venice, Horvat sent to each artist a collage from the series she was making while living in the pavilion for the duration of the Biennale. All the artworks traveled to Venice and back via informal transport networks; in the bags and suitcases of friends, acquaintances, and sometimes strangers enlisted as couriers for the project.
The exhibition at the MSU presents a selection of works by artists who participated in the project, alongside extensive accompanying documentation that testifies to the project’s conception, development, and realization. By the Means at Hand activated complex processes of collaboration, exchange, and solidarity, and was realized through the participation of a large number of artists, friends, acquaintances, and visitors who transported the works between Venice and numerous cities around the world. It is precisely this network of relationships and trust, enabling the physical movement of artworks from hand to hand, that forms the central concept of the project.
Through this exceptional donation, the complete archive of By the Means at Hand enters the holdings of the Museum of Contemporary Art, enriching the institution’s collection with one of the most significant recent projects of Croatian contemporary art presented on the international scene. The donation is also notable for its structure: it is a complex artistic work that includes contributions by a large number of international artists, as well as rich documentation of the processes, communication, and exchanges that formed the foundation of the project. In this way, the Museum acquires not only an individual artwork, but an entire archive of a transnational artistic ecosystem, opening new possibilities for research, interpretation, and future presentations. With the project’s inclusion in the MSU collection, this unique artistic structure gains an institutional framework that ensures its long-term preservation, study, and reactivation. The donation thus goes beyond the act of transferring an artwork to a museum, becoming an important contribution to the development and documentation of contemporary artistic practice in Croatia, as well as of the international networks of collaboration at the heart of the project.
On the occasion of donating the work to the Museum of Contemporary Art, the artist stated:
“I’m very pleased that my work By the Means at Hand will become part of the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art. By the Means at Hand is a work realized thanks to the engagement of a large number of people – more than 200 artists who accepted my invitation to participate in the project, as well as at least twice as many others (friends, acquaintances, visitors to the exhibition in Venice) who agreed to act as couriers, helping us deliver artworks between Venice and cities around the world.
I am grateful to the Ministry of Culture and Media, as the commissioner of the project for the Croatian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024, to the expert jury that unanimously selected my project in the 2023 competition, to the project team, and to the many partners and collaborators without whose input and support the realization of the project in Venice would not have been possible.
From the very beginning of working on this project, it was my wish and intention to donate the work, after the Venice Biennale, to a public institution in Croatia. This donation is in fact the final gesture of my work, since By the Means at Hand is a dynamic system of artist exchange, centered on friendship, mutual support, generosity, and goodwill. A work based on a gift economy thus itself becomes a gift.
I am delighted that we will be able to present By the Means at Hand to a wider audience in Croatia and that the project will take on a new life through new exhibition incarnations. I believe that the institutional framework of the MSU will contribute to its contextualization and that the dialogues and reflections the project gives rise to, which started during its presentation in Venice, will continue to develop in this new setting.”
The project catalogue Vlatka Horvat: By the Means at Hand will be presented alongside the exhibition, offering detailed insight into the work’s creation and realization. Moving beyond the traditional exhibition catalogue format, the publication reflects the project’s evolving nature through a combination of documentation, dialogue, and reflections on the process itself. Edited by Vlatka Horvat, Antonia Majača, and Kate Sutton, and designed by Tina Ivezić, the catalogue includes installation photographs from the Venice exhibition by photographer Hugo Glendinning, as well as various traces of the project’s performative processes, including the documentation of Horvat’s collages created during her eight-month residency in the Croatian Pavilion. The catalogue is published by Archive Books (Berlin/Milan), Unstable Object (London), and Oaza (Zagreb).
In addition to the catalogue published after the closing of the Biennale, another contextualizing publication produced as part of the project – which was originally presented at the opening of the exhibition in Venice in April 2024 and which was available to all visitors of the Croatian Pavilion – will be available free of charge to visitors at the MSU for the duration of the exhibition. The reader publication was designed by Maša Poljanec and Tina Ivezić.
Vlatka Horvat is an artist working across forms – from sculpture, installation, collage, and photography to performance, video, writing, and publishing. Her work is presented internationally in a variety of contexts – in museums and galleries, in reclaimed spaces, in theatre and dance venues and festivals, and in public space. She has presented solo exhibitions and projects at international institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art (Zagreb), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna), PUBLICS (Helsinki), Hessel Museum - Bard Center for Curatorial Studies (New York), MARTa Museum (Herford), Stroom (The Hague), Bergen Kunsthall, Witte de With (Rotterdam, now Institute Melly), PEER (London), Museums Sheffield, Boston University Art Gallery, Portland Contemporary, The Kitchen and MoMA PS1 (both NYC). In 2024 she represented Croatia at the 60th Venice Biennale. Her work has also been included in the 1st Aichi Triennale (Nagoya), the 11th Istanbul Biennale, the 1st Industrial Art Biennale (Rijeka), the 53rd October Salon (Belgrade), and the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale. Her performances have been commissioned by venues including Basel Ballet; HAU - Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin); LIFT - London International Festival of Theatre; PACT Zollverein (Essen); Kaai Studios (Brussels); KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen (Hannover); Tanzquartier Wien (Vienna); the Fondation Cartier (Paris), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Clockshop (Los Angeles), and many others. Born in Croatia, she moved to the United States as a teenager and spent twenty years there. She lives in London. www.vlatkahorvat.com
Selection of artworks and archival material: Vlatka Horvat
Exhibition set-up: Vlatka Horvat
Organization and coordination of the exhibition: Morana Matković, Ana Škegro
Technical set-up: Dalibor Cicvara, Mirjana Grab, Igor Lukić, Aleksandar Milošević, Ivan Tudek, Filip Zima
Light design: Zdenko Zavalić, Luka Šubić
Wall texts: Vlatka Horvat
Design of wall texts: Martin Peranović
Conservation and restoration support: Mirta Pavić
Carpentry workshop: R3B (Venecija), Umjetnički obrt Atelier MP
Photo wallpaper print: Print shop Zinam
Photographs of the pavilion and video: Hugo Glendinning
Catalogue design: Tina Ivezić (Oaza)
Reader design: Maša Poljanec i Tina Ivezić (Oaza)
Processing of archival material: Vlatka Horvat, Kristina Bonjeković-Stojković (MSU), Sanela Tepić (MSU)
The exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art has been realized with the support of the City of Zagreb and the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.
The Croatian Pavilion project – including the exhibition and catalogue at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia – was realized with financial support from the commissioning body, the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia. The Venice exhibition in 2024 was made possible with the generous support of the LUMA Foundation, donation support from EPSON and Prostorija, and a residency organized by Centrala. The catalogue was supported by the ERSTE Foundation, with additional support from GAEP Gallery.
More information about the project:
Project website: http://www.croatianpavilion2024.com
Pavilion documentation on the artist’s website: https://www.vlatkahorvat.com/portfolios/by-the-means-at-hand/
The catalogue is published in English and available via co-publisher and distributor Archive Books: https://www.archivebooks.org/by-the-means-at-hand/
Instagram: @croatianpavilion2024 – https://www.instagram.com/croatianpavilion202
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61570232459080
