Leo Katunarić Kadele is a Croatian visual artist, theatre director, and theorist whose work moves fluidly across the fields of visual art, performance, and media theory. Educated as a theatre director at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb, he has developed a multidisciplinary practice that spans painting, performance, installation, and critical writing. His projects frequently address the convergence of technological systems, spiritual frameworks, and the post-human condition. Kadele’s installations and performances often take the form of conceptual environments—altars, temples, or sanctuaries—where digital, human, and ritualistic elements collide. He is particularly noted for his long-term exploration of "post-techno liturgies," ritual-based performances structured around machine-human interactions. These works feature hybrid figures, real-time data, and objects like 3D-printed godheads, forming a speculative vision of belief systems in the digital age. A recurring element in Kadele’s work is the figure of the post-shaman: an avatar through which he questions identity, authorship, and spiritual agency. Alternating between corporate attire and post-industrial detritus, the artist himself becomes a medium for exploring how ritual, performance, and aesthetics can respond to algorithmic alienation and technological control. Kadele has realized numerous projects worldwide, with exhibitions and performances in Japan, China, India, South Korea, Colombia, the United States, Germany, Greece, and across the Balkans. His practice is also deeply embedded in cultural production and research. He is the founder of KantunArt and MaxArtFest, platforms for experimental and interdisciplinary arts, and has held leadership roles at the Zagreb Youth Theatre (ZKM). As a theorist, Kadele is the author of several publications, including Artistic Performance in the Digital Culture (2022), Medea95 (2000), and The Return of Europe, a Cow (2007). He holds a PhD in contemporary digital performance dramaturgy from the University of Zagreb. (https://www.lk2.org/) Born 1965, Split, Croatia Lives and works in Zagreb, Croatia Education 2021. PhD. Zagreb University Croatia. Thesis: Digital performance. 2015. - 2020. University of Zagreb. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. PhD candidate. 1986. - 1991. Academy of drama art. Zagreb University. Croatia. Theatre director. MA. 1989. - 1990. Rector's Award Zagreb University, Croatia. Selected Exhibitions & Projects (2005–2025) China, Dafen Biennale – Re-create! (2025) Greece, Paxos Biennale – Our hope: Unstable gods (2024) Germany, Bremen/Berlin/Oldenburg – Mit kunst zu Kant (2024) Croatia, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb – Cancelled / Machine loves you! (2023) South Korea, Seoul, Pasa Festival – Unstable gods, erase us, please! (2022) Colombia, Bogotá – Trilogy Desaparecido (2018) Italy, Rome, Artrooms – Digital family (2018) China, Beijing Biennial – Representative of Croatia (2017) Japan, Tottori – Constructing a re-death machine (2013) Japan, Hiroshima – Cancellation project (2013) India, New Delhi/Varanasi/Dharamshala/Hardwar – Trilogy: A map to lose yourself (2010) Syria, Damascus, AllArtNow Festival (2010) Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, Mess Festival and IPC Gallery (2010) Japan, Tokyo, Tokyo Wonder Site (2009) Croatia, Zagreb, Mimara Museum and Music Biennale (2009) Colombia, Bogotá, National University Museum of Art – Art is War! (2008) Germany, Berlin, Machinehaus (2005)
Leo Katunarić Kadele Artifacts of the Future Past Each painting and sculptural object by Leo Katunarić Kadele is the result of a live pseudo-ritual—an embodied performance drawing from the symbolic gestures of ancient humanity and the emerging logic of machine systems. These are not traditional artworks; they are contemporary relics, forged in the tension between obsolete magic and accelerating information. Kadele’s rituals simulate sacred human actions—invocation, repetition, ecstatic movement—but filtered through the lens of data structures, glitch aesthetics, and techno-material logic. From this charged collision, objects are born: ambiguous, resonant forms that seem to contain purpose but evade clear definition. They are not made to serve; they are made to witness. Much like the pictographic marks left on prehistoric cave walls, these works carry the pulse of a particular moment in human evolution. They are time-stamped documents of our transition—from organic to algorithmic, from ritual to code. To collect them is to hold a fragment of now, impressed with the urgency and uncertainty of our age. These are not just artworks. They are artifacts of a species in flux—residues of performances no longer meant to summon gods, but to confront the machine and the self in equal measure. Unique and unrepeatable, each piece is a threshold between what we were and what we are becoming.
