Monumental terracotta will glitch and glow at Belgrade's Silosi
Somewhere between the brutalist concrete of Silosi cultural space in Belgrade and the fired clay of a small town of Kikinda, something unusual is taking shape.
Pearl Made of Clay is a retrospective of 45 years of the International Sculpture Symposium Terra, presented by Terra Center for Fine and Applied Arts — the world's largest institution dedicated to contemporary monumental terracotta sculpture. For this exhibition, works by 50 sculptors from 47 countries travel to 700m2 of the former grain mill at Silosi, the riverside complex that Lonely Planet named one of its Top 25 Best Experiences in Best in Travel 2026.
Alongside the sculpture, on show for one night only on 12 June, will be Terra Ephemera: three site-specific projection works conceived by new media artists, Belgrade-based Aizek and Sasha Snova and Mancunian Ivan Solod. The intervention was curated by artistic collective Lightscape Ventures that specialises in projection mapping, narrative spaces and interactive art. The works were originally created for the Night of the Museum at Terra in Kikinda this May, and the response was strong enough for these to travel to Belgrade. "We intentionally invited artists whose practice is entirely digital and who had no previous relationship with terracotta," say co-founders Victor Lander and Sergey Ivanchuk. "We asked them to encounter these sculptures for the first time, to respond to them and to let this conversation shape the work."
Aizek's Quantum of Perception works on three anthropomorphic figures by Swiss-Serbian sculptor Nikola Zarić, using projection to unsettle their solid forms until the act of looking becomes, in his words, "less certain and more fluid." Ivan Solod's Little Birds turns a terracotta bird bath by Montenegrin artist Željko Reljić into something alive: light rippling across the clay as if it were real water, birdsong in the air, and a classic poem rebuilt letter by letter from sound. Sasha Snova's Negligible Activity addresses a monumental face by Norwegian sculptor Guri Berg, adding a digital layer that hovers between presence and dissolution.
When Terra Ephemera first showed in Kikinda during the Night of the Museum, visitors who came for the projections stayed for the sculptures. "To bring monumental terracotta from Kikinda into the concrete body of the Silosi is to create a meeting of two strong spaces," says Anastasija Ćetković, founder of Silosi. "Terra brings a story that also begins with material and place, and then grows into something much larger: a living cultural identity. It reminds us that without strong roots we do not really know who we are, where we come from or where we are going."
Biseri od Blata / Pearl Made of Clay runs 12–28 June 2026 at Silosi, Dunavski kej 46, Dorćol, Belgrade. Preview and Terra Ephemera intervention on show on 12 June only from 20:00 – 00:00. Entry is free.
Photo (c) Konstantin Kondrukhov; Silosi photo courtesy Silosi Beograd
