Kaja Upelj’s practice explores the ideology of womanhood — particularly its relationship to the body, societal roles, and the notion of femininity as something fixed or predetermined. Working primarily in sculpture, she investigates these questions through a diverse range of materials, including glass, stone, textiles, and most recently, soap. Her conceptually driven practice remains anchored in a deep engagement with process.
Deeply personal in nature, Upelj’s work often draws from family relationships and childhood memories. She frequently engages with materials that carry intergenerational histories — substances historically charged or symbolically empowered — as a way of connecting the intimate with the cultural. Through this process, she reconfigures perceptions of both material and meaning, merging attraction with disturbance, beauty with unease.
Flowers accompanying her works indicate rituals evoking the transformative nature of our personal journeys, mirrors are used as a means of the acceptance and reflections on self, and her sensual glass objects eloquently portray human being so beautifully; strong in appearance, fragile in reality. Most recent body of work explores the tension between constraint and personal identity through the conflicting properties of soap — a material traditionally associated with purity, discipline, and domesticity.
Kaja Upelj (b.1992) is a Slovenian artist working between Slovenia and the United Kingdom. She graduated with MA from the Royal College of Art in 2018. Upelj studied in Estonian Academy of Art and received BA in Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana in 2016. In 2022, she had a solo exhibition Where There’s Nothing Else Left, Hold Me Tighter at Ljubljana’s Castle in Slovenia. Notable group exhibition include Green World at Emma Scully Gallery(2023), Perfect Darkness at Officine Saffi (2019) and presentations at art fairs such as Kiaf Seoul (2023), West Bund Art & Design (2023), Art021 (2023), Design Miami (2022), Miart (2019, 2020) and Nomad Circle (2019,2020).
Winner of the Art Residency in New York City by Slovenian Ministry of Culture in 2022, Upelj also received a scholarship by Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust in 2018 and gained training at Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. Other scholarships include Pilchuck Summer School (2017) and Scholarship for Postgraduate Study Abroad by Slovenian Ministry of Culture (2016). She was recognised as one of the global emerging young talents at New Horizons 2018 in China. In 2025, she was invited to participate in the artist residency at Villa Lena in Tuscany.
Kaja Upelj is currently undertaking further studies in department of Fine Art in Goldsmiths University.