Exhibition: I’ll Give You Three Guesses

Visual artist Tajda Tomšič (1996) works at the intersection of sculpture, installation art and performance art. She holds a bachelor’s degree in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana and a master’s degree from Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). In her artistic explorations she addresses questions ranging from women’s issues to the re-examination of the artistic elements through which she shapes her own narrative and aesthetic language. Her work is based on an instinctive approach to material and space, with an emphasis on tactility, light, colour reflections, the presence of the body and the spiritual dimension of the object. Her artistic wholes construct a refined dialogue involving the body, story and space and establish a space for the reinterpretation of the female experience. In her words, in her art she is “exploring the role of women in contemporary society”, where “mythological narratives, archetypes and oral tradition become points of departure for the transformation and aestheticisation of symbols and their placement in new, contemporary contexts.”

For the exhibition I’ll give you three guesses the artist subtly recasts a sacred space as an area of intimate reflection, a place where outside meets inside, public meets private, sacred meets profane. Her four intermedia installations in Križevniška Church transform a place of worship and prayer into a mental landscape of introspection, corporeality and personal reflection on the role of women in contemporary society.

The exhibition’s title, I’ll give you three guesses, is open to multiple interpretations. It sounds playful, almost trivial, yet it carries a hint of irony and doubt. It is a phrase we use when we know that the answer is not simple, or when we sense that the person we are talking to already knows the answer. In the context of the exhibition, the title also relates to the ancient symbol of the Sphinx, the guardian of riddles, who puts travellers to the test with a question about their own essence. The artist plays with the idea of guessing, exploring the ways in which we seek truth, meaning and self in a world flooded with information. Are we, she wonders, even still capable of guessing without immediately googling the answer?

The central figure of the exhibition, derived from Greek mythology, is the Sphinx, a winged monster with the body of a lion and the face of a maiden, who terrorised Thebes with her riddles. Tajda Tomšič brings her to life again in monumental sculptural form, but changes her meaning: the Sphinx is no longer guarding others but herself. As the artist puts it: “She is protecting herself, her tranquillity, her activity and her sexuality. She is guarding all her secrets, even though she is a mystery to herself.” Her body, draped over a bed, and her smile – vague, almost sphinxlike – embody a paradox in which strength meets vulnerability. This intimate, almost self-satisfied smile becomes the key starting point of the exhibition, reflecting the artist’s understanding of strength – not as social hierarchy or power, but as a capacity for self-preservation and authenticity. Tomšič writes: “For me, strength is the ability to stay in touch with yourself even when the world around you is falling apart. The ability to recognise truth, to stand behind it, and at the same time remain gentle.” In this sense, the Sphinx is a symbol not of domination but of perseverance, guarding not the threshold of the world but the door to her own inner self.

Around the Sphinx the artist has arranged paintings that act like mirrors: larger black elliptical ones and one smaller white one. Placed on metal stands, they surround the sculpted form like a circle of light and thought. Created with tar and oil paints, the surfaces are glossy, almost digital; they capture space, movement and the gaze. They reflect content but also the viewer.

These mirrors remind us of screens. Those screens that have become part of our everyday lives. The smartphones and screens we constantly hold in front of us are the new mirrors of modernity, the new myths. We have accepted them as an extension of the body, and with them their algorithm, an artificial soul that does not feel, yet shapes our attention, thoughts and desires.

The artist thus opens a reflection on human beings today, caught between the physical experience of the world and the digital projection of the self. In an age in which algorithms guide our lives and our everyday decisions are made in silent consensus with an invisible code, the question of inner connection becomes all the more important. With the emergence of the phenomenon of “doomscrolling” – the endless scrolling through content in which we no longer seek information but only the feeling that we still exist – we are faced with the question: does this addiction to images and information create an illusion of freedom? The world tells us that we can choose everything, but in doing so it empties choice of its meaning. The capitalist world sells freedom as a product, but freedom trapped in infinite choice is nothing more than an endlessly repeating loop.

I’ll give you three guesses can thus be read as a metaphor for the contemporary condition, where the exhibition is experienced as a question that is posed by the artist but must be answered by each viewer themselves. Guessing is not a game here, but a way of thinking, a confrontation with mystery, silence and unknowing. In a world in which we are constantly measured, recorded and directed, the exhibition offers a space of silence. A space where mirrors are no longer screens but doors to the inner self. Where the sacred and the digital meet not in opposition but in the question: who are we when we look at our own reflection?

The church, once the space of the artist’s first encounter with art, here becomes a place of contrasts: between faith and doubt, symbol and reality, human beings and their digital doubles.

In the artist’s work, the mythological figure of the Sphinx merges with the self-awareness of contemporary womanhood and a critical reflection on human beings today, lost in reflections. In the tension between past and present, the sacred and the virtual, the body and the screen, Tomšič seeks the possibility of a new understanding of strength. Not as power over others but as a gentle yet unwavering power over oneself.

I’ll give you three guesses is a spatial meditation and a mirror of time. It is an exhibition that reminds us that freedom, truth and peace can only be found when the world stops for a moment. When our gaze turns inwards instead of towards a screen. And perhaps there, in silence, finds an answer.

Dr. Nelida Nemec