Leo Katunarić Kadele is a contemporary visual artist, director, and theorist whose practice embodies a rare synthesis of aesthetic experimentation, intellectual inquiry, and cross-cultural engagement. Trained in theatre direction at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb, Kadele has since developed a polyphonic and transdisciplinary artistic vocabulary that expands across painting, installation, theatre, performance, film, and critical theory. Kadele’s work explores the poetics of transformation in an age of technological saturation and spiritual displacement. At the core of his practice lies an enduring interest in the dramaturgies of ritual, the interface between human and machine performance, and the reconfiguration of sacred iconographies in post-secular, digitized societies. His renowned diptych *EAST / WEST*, for instance, investigates the ritual energy of Eastern traditions in contrast to Western algorithmic logic, resulting in a visual tension that is both contemplative and critical. As a theatre-maker, Kadele is the author of numerous multidisciplinary stage works in which he often fuses live performers with programmed systems, investigating the thresholds between presence, automation, and authorship. His approach to dramaturgy has been recognized as pioneering in the analysis and practice of digital performance, culminating in a PhD (2021) focused on new dramaturgies in contemporary digital art. Kadele’s international presence is significant: his works have been realized and exhibited across Asia, the Americas, and Europe, including in Japan, China, India, South Korea, the United States, Colombia, Mexico, Germany, Greece, and throughout the Balkans. His collaborations span major institutions such as Tokas (Tokyo), the National Museum of China (Beijing), the Iberoamericano Festival (Bogotá), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Zagreb), and the Music Biennale Zagreb, among others. He has also presented at academic and artistic conferences in Israel, Austria, Serbia, China, and Croatia. In addition to his artistic output, Kadele is a prolific writer and scholar. His publications, such as *Artistic Performance in the Digital Culture* (Leykam International, 2022), *Medea95* (University of Genoa, 2000), and *The Return of Europe, a Cow* (Plima, 2007), reflect a sustained philosophical engagement with media, performance, and contemporary mythology. He is chairman of the symposium *Media and Philosophy* and a recognized voice in the field of performance theory. Kadele is also a cultural catalyst. He has founded and led numerous institutions and platforms for contemporary art—including KantunArt, MaxArtFest, and the Zagreb Youth Theatre (ZKM)—curating and fostering dialogues between local and international artists, theorists, and audiences. Now based in Zagreb, Leo Katunarić Kadele continues to work at the forefront of experimental visual and performance art, challenging conventions while creating liminal spaces where theology, technology, and human experience intersect.
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.
