Neja Tomšič (1982) is a visual artist by education, and by practice also a producer, poet, and writer (The Girl Now Stands by the Window: (Three Stories) and Four Poems), and by a twist of fate also a performer whose work is distinctly interdisciplinary.

She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (ALUO) in 2008 with a thesis titled Cartography in Contemporary Art. She later wrote a dissertation on how colonial history is expressed in artistic documentary films intended for the gallery context in Belgium and the Netherlands.
In 2002, MoTA was established; Neja joined the team in 2007. Before that, she worked mainly as an artist, and afterward increasingly as a producer. In 2009, Neja was one of the co-founders of the SONICA Festival of Transitory Art.

She was accepted into the ArtsLink Fellowship in the USA, in Baltimore at the University of Maryland, in the Intermedia Postgraduate Department. There she began Opium Clippers, initially conceived as a farewell dinner. However, as Neja delved deeper into the research, the project grew into something much larger. Neja explored opium addiction and discovered a link between clippers—then the fastest in the world. The work continued for another three years. In 2017, she created the performance in its current form and has been performing it ever since (to date, nearly 100 performances). The original tea ceremony was intended for a gallery context, as Neja approached theater cautiously, not being a trained performer. Due to invitations and networks, it evolved into a theatrical performance.

She compiled and presented the results of her research, emphasizing the connection between 18th and 19th-century practices and the present day, in what she describes as a “free archive” or an artist’s book. This book focuses on the economic, political, and media symbols of tea and opium trade in the 18th and 19th centuries as well as in modern times. The artistic research was transformed into a visual essay. The book won the award for Best Slovenian Artist’s Book in 2017/2018 and also received the award for Best Design in the category “book as object” at the Slovenian Book Fair.

In the USA, the research-artistic collective Nonument Group was also formed (consisting of Neja Tomšič, Martin Bricelj Baraga, Miloš Kosec, and Nika Grabar). Their first project was The McKeldin Fountain, followed by several others.

Sources:
neja tomšič
my grandma is a nonument