Our Team
Ana Mikin
Founder & Artistic Director, Curator & CommissionerAna Mikin is an artistic director, curator and commissioner specialising in contemporary art in public space. Over nearly a decade she has led the full cycle of public art programmes, from concept development and artist selection to commissioning, production and delivery, presenting more than 100 site-specific installations and urban interventions in collaboration with artists, municipalities and cultural institutions. Her practice also spans urban scenography and creative placemaking. She is the founder and artistic director of ARC, a framework for developing and commissioning public art and urban cultural programmes for cities, regions and institutions. She leads the long-term programmes Around, which activates urban space in Zagreb through temporary installations, and UpArt, dedicated to sustainable, reuse-based practice in public space. Her work is preceded by a decade in theatre, music, film and interdisciplinary production. She led international co-productions for the Zagreb Youth Theatre and the World Theatre Festival, produced music festivals, and coordinated the international promotion of Croatian film at festivals and markets including Cannes and Berlin for the Croatian Audiovisual Centre. She also headed communications and institutional coordination for Rendez-vous, the festival of France in Croatia, with more than 350 events. She lives and works between Zagreb and Lisbon.
Tena Bakšaj
Associate Curator Tena Bakšaj is a curator, writer and cultural worker active on the independent art scene. She holds a Master’s degree in German Studies and French Language and Literature from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, having previously studied Art History at the same faculty. She has further developed her professional practice through various workshops, educational programmes and curatorial residencies, including ULUPUH’s Art Criticism Workshop, the Curatorial Platform, the Kulturflux online platform, and the Pilotenkueche curatorial residency in Leipzig. Over the past decade, she has worked with a range of art and cultural organisations. She was an external collaborator at the Croatian Association of Visual Artists (HDLU) in Zagreb (2018–2019), co-curator at Lauba – House for People and Art (2019), Programme Coordinator at Gallery 90-60-90 / Platform for Contemporary Art, operating within Pogon – Zagreb Center for Independent Culture and Youth (2019–2022), and an advisor in the Department of Culture of the Serbian National Council in Zagreb (2022–2024). She currently works as a co-curator at Trotoar Gallery in Zagreb. Since 2021, together with colleagues, she has co-organised and curated the annual group exhibition Shaped Shapes at Gallery Siva, bringing together artists whose practices are rooted in abstraction. Her work focuses on extra-institutional and interdisciplinary artistic practices within the field of local and regional contemporary art.
Lea Vene
Associate Curator Lea Vene teaches at the Faculty of Textile Technology in Zagreb, where she has been a lecturer since 2014, teaching courses including Anthropology of Fashion, Musealisation of Fashion, 20th-Century Fashion and Contemporary Fashion. Since 2024, she has also taught History of Photography at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb, and Visual Ethics at die Angewandte in Vienna. A particular focus of her educational work is the Tvornica programme, which she initiated with Ana Kovačić in 2014. The programme provides mentoring and curatorial support to young artists, as well as support for the realisation of a solo exhibition at the Miroslav Kraljević Gallery. In 2021, together with Ana Kovačić and within the WHW programme, she launched Novaci, an educational platform for young curators, which has so far held five editions. The Novaci project focuses on curatorial practices in the field of contemporary art and on providing participants with their first practical experience in the field. In 2020, she was one of the lecturers in the Training of Visual Artists for Work in the Cultural and Creative Industries programme, organised by the Croatian Association of Visual Artists (HDLU) in partnership with Algebra. As a guest lecturer, she has taught at the Academy of Applied Arts in Rijeka, The Regent’s University London, and the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.
