We are delighted to invite you to the opening of Exposed Layers, a solo installation by artist Elham Hadian, created during the residency program “Artists in Archaeology.” This residency is a collaborative project initiated by Prof. Dr. Barbara Horejs, Deputy Managing Director of the Austrian Archaeological Institute, and Rosaura Cauchi, Director of Barvinskyi Art Gallery.

Exposed Layers is the result of an artistic engagement with archaeological fieldwork in southern Serbia’s Leskovac Basin, a site of early Neolithic settlement of Svinjarička Čuka and ongoing interdisciplinary research. The residency offered Hadian the opportunity to work closely with archaeologists and scientists from the Pusta Reka Research Collaboration—a partnership between the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Archaeological Institute in Belgrade, in cooperation with the Archaeological Museum of Leskovac.

Initiated in 2017, this collaboration investigates human interaction with the landscape from the Early Neolithic through the Bronze Age. Fieldwork and surveys conducted in the region have uncovered valuable insights into prehistoric life and environmental change.

Hadian’s installation emerges from this context, reflecting on the dialogue between past and present, material and memory. In her own words:
"The past exists as both a blueprint and a fragment—offering a foundation upon which the present is reimagined. My work explores the interplay between materiality and memory, layering absence and presence to reveal how traces of history shape what is and what could be."