Hope Factory Print

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.