Rene Rusjan began her career In the late 1980s, often as part of so called Young Slovenian Sculpture, within the spaces of the former Yugoslavia and in those days still rare occasions abroad. During the war in Bosnia she left sculpture and joined volunteers in Bosnian refugee camps in Ljubljana. Doubts about the meaning of art and its role in our lives were and still are always present in her work. She searches and often finds answers in various segments of life. More than sculpture, her media of expression in the past twenty years were words, conversations, letters, photography, video, sound, spaces of communication, means of communication, relationships (human-human, student-mentor, artist-artist, artist-society, artist-everyday life ...), spaces with memory, spaces of encounters. She is rarely present in gallery spaces; more often she finds her place in informal contexts.
She was born in Ljubljana in 1962, but spent her early age in Goriška, near Italian border. She graduated in sculpture at Academy of Fine Arts, University of Ljubljana, in the class of prof. Slavko Tihec, in 1987. She was a free-lance artist from 1988 to 2009, living and working in Ljubljana. With a group of colleague artists, she founded the Cultural Association Galerija GT (1988). Some years later, together with her former academy colleague and later life partner Boštjan Potokar, she conceived and founded the Famul Stuart School of Applied Arts. From 1994, she has been the programme head of the school and the mentor for sculpture and contextual projects.
Based on the sixteen years of experience of the Famul Stuart School, its programmes reformed into School of Arts at University of Nova Gorica, in 2009. Rusjan is there the programme director and associate professor of contemporary art practices.
Rusjan has been gaining her experience in a number of symposiums and artist residencies throughout Europe and the world. She lives and works in Ljubljana from the 1980s, but since the relocation of the school from Ljubljana to Gorica in 2012, she is, after decades, discovering again her home region.
