Slow burn. The art of waiting

Artist: Vlada Lobus
Curator: Jan Van Woensel

28 October – 6 December 2026

To wait is to exist between worlds. It is the suspension of time—a quiet, often invisible friction between the present moment and a desired future, or a vanished past.

Originally from Dnipro and currently based in Krakow, Poland, Vlada Lobus presents her first solo exhibition in Lviv, bringing together works of photography, and conceptual art. Her work captures the profound, complex human experience of waiting: for a person to arrive, for a message to be answered, for a circumstance to shift, for an image to reveal itself or remain forever hidden, or for the reclamation of a time already lost to history.

Central to the exhibition is the installation piece “92 days,” a project that serves as a profound contemplation of liminality. Spanning 92 consecutive days, the artist’s practice of capturing a photograph and pairing it with a written reflection evolved into a rigorous daily ritual. Originating from her personal experiences, an academic background in psychology, and deep interactions with others, the work uncovers the complex dynamics of uncertainty, anticipation, and incompleteness. By sealing each undeveloped image into an envelope, the artist intentionally denies immediate access to the final visual. This act of restraint directly challenges our contemporary culture of immediacy. Instead, it elevates the significance of the process itself, investigating the weight of experienced time through repetitive action. Within the context of the exhibition, “92 days” becomes a powerful testament to the necessity of waiting, framing uncertainty not as a void, but as an essential, deeply felt aspect of the human experience.

Specially created for “Slow burn” and making its debut in the exhibition, a new body of work emerges from a remote, artistic collaboration between the artist and her mother, who remains in their hometown of Dnipro. Confronting the profound physical and psychological effects of displacement and the persistent ache of un-belonging, the artist intertwines intimate self-portraits with photographs of Dnipro captured by Maryna Lobus. The resulting dialogue is a poetic yet wrenching attempt to bridge the distance, and reconnect with home. Within the space of the exhibition, these images become their own form of slow burn—a quiet, sustained negotiation of separation, memory, and enduring familial bonds.

Waiting is rarely passive. It is an active state of endurance—a slow burn where anticipation, anxiety, grief, and hope simmer quietly beneath the surface, building an invisible intensity over time. Vlada Lobus investigates the visual and emotional vocabulary of this gradual pause. Through internal landscapes of longing and the external environments of transition, her works capture the heavy weight and quiet heat of suspension.

Expanding on this dialogue, curator Jan Van Woensel displays a handwritten letter he received in 1998 from the renowned Belgian artist Sam Dillemans, alongside a photograph of an artwork. In the letter, Dillemans offers raw, personal advice on how to navigate the artistic life, emphasizing the necessity “to find yourself unimportant, transgress your knowledge, destroy everything, and laugh.” Nearly three decades later, the curator has yet to reply—he is waiting for the right words to form, a deliberate delay and a conceptual project he intends to finally complete in 2028.

In a world obsessed with immediacy, “Slow burn: The art of waiting” reminds us that the times we hold still are not empty space. They are where we are shaped, where we remember, and where we wait.

Jan Van Woensel, 30.09.2026

The artist and the curator would like to thank students from the LNAA course “curatorial theory & practice” who served as exhibition assistants: Anastasiia Molchanova, Oleksandra Lishchuk, Anhelina Bila, Daniil Stashko.

Instagram
Vlada Lobus — @vlada_lobus
Jan Van Woensel — @curator_jan_van_woensel
LNAA curatorial theory & practice — @ctp_lnaa