Metamedij

11/05 2026

Golden Watermelon 10.0 – Dora Ramljak received the Special award from the Lapidarium Museum

News

As part of the tenth edition of the Young Artists Award Zlatna Lubenica (Golden Watermelon), the Lapidarium Museum, in collaboration with the Metamedij association, awarded a special prize to one selected finalist within the framework of the work and activities of the Gallery-Gallerie Rigo. The award, which consists of a solo exhibition in 2026 at the Rigo Gallery, was, by the selection of curators Dr. Jerica Ziherl and Sabina Oroshi, granted to Dora Ramljak.

 

 

 

Dora Ramljak is a transdisciplinary designer and researcher working at the intersection of science, environmental studies, politics, and social practice. Trained as a photographer at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and as a designer at the Design Academy Eindhoven, she initially used photography to observe natural and social processes and conduct community-based research. Through residencies, such as the Fabrica Research Centre, she expanded her practice to scientific collaboration in the fields of marine biology, biochemistry, and physics.

In 2026, she was selected as one of 10 finalists of the Young Artists Award Zlatna lubenica, by a professional jury comprising Olga Majcen Linn, Pavle Mijuca, Ketrin Milićević Mijošek, and Oleg Šuran. Her work Radial Drift is on display at the finalists’ exhibition entitled Walks Through Liminal Spaces at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Istria in Pula until 18 May 2026.

 

 

 

 

Radial Drift is a short film that explores how systems designed to sustain life often create exclusion. The film traces the boundaries between bodies, infrastructures and environments, observing how matter circulates through them and how identity is formed in the space between receiving and releasing. Through themes of transformation, decay and renewal, the film uses metabolism as a framework to question the usual divisions between nature and culture, organic and synthetic, self and other. Through filtration systems, architectural demarcations and biological processes, it reveals how even waste carries traces of social values. Filmed on a seaweed farm, where organic growth and engineered systems intertwine, the film explores the ways in which life is channelled, filtered and optimised, exposing the infrastructures that manage not only water and energy, but also bodies, work and desires. In this space of cultivated growth and controlled decay, the film questions the systems we create to sustain life and what they exclude in the process. It asks what it means to exist within networks that strive for purity, when life itself is based on intertwining, surplus and renewal.

 

 

 

 

The Golden Watermelon Award for Young Artists was launched by the Metamedij association in 2017 with the aim of creating a dynamic platform for critical examination of contemporary cultural phenomena through the prism of new media and interdisciplinary artistic practices. Each year, through a carefully designed conceptual framework, the competition encourages young artists and art collectives to explore complex social, technological and cultural constellations; from questioning existing social patterns in the digital age to exploring the intersections between science and art, language and media context. The specificity of the Golden Watermelon lies precisely in its ability to construct an intellectual space that interweaves theory, critical practice and experimental artistic approaches. By supporting the development of young artists who work at the intersections of new media, interdisciplinary research and innovative practices, the project continuously maps the dynamic transformations of the contemporary Croatian art scene. Through collaboration with prominent domestic experts and cultural institutions, the Golden Watermelon Award becomes a generator of theoretical discourse that questions the border zones between art, technology, social theory, and critical practice.