Professorship Conferred on Jana Hojstričová and Marcel Benčík from AFAD

On March 31, 2026, the President of the Slovak Republic, Peter Pellegrini, conferred the scientific and pedagogical titles of Professor, including to our colleague and colleague:

Jana Hojstričová

Photographer, visual artist, and educator. She works at the Department of Photography and New Media, where she leads the Studio Photography – Reality – Construction together with Michal Huba. She also obtained her master’s (1997) and doctoral degree (2006) at this department. In 2011, she was awarded the title of Associate Professor at AFAD. She has been active on the Slovak art scene since the late 1990s. In her early work, she focused on the subjective depiction of human intimacy, mainly of women, and gradually anchored her practice in a sociological understanding of art and an interest in the position of women in the family and society. Later, through the exploration of historical photographic techniques, she began to turn her attention toward the natural sciences, museum culture, and experimentation with photographic processes. Her photographic collections document the scientific processes of museum categorization of nature. At the same time, they point to the paradox that even museums striving to preserve nature are subject to change and transformation. Similarly, gradually degrading historical photographic techniques—toward which the artist is drawn—are also subject to change. Her photographic collections thus become evidence of a reality that is constantly changing and disappearing. In recent years, she has collaborated as part of an artistic duo with glass artist Palo Macho. Together, they have successfully developed several approaches to applying photography to glass, and their joint work has been presented at numerous international exhibitions.

Marcel Benčík

He has long been active in several areas of communication design. He studied graphic design at the Department of Visual Communication at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (1998–2004), where he also completed his doctoral studies (2004–2007). He currently works at the academy as an Associate Professor and Vice-Rector for International Cooperation and is the head of the Studio Priestor at the Department of Visual Communication, which he himself initiated. He has been working continuously as a freelance graphic designer since 2002. In his design practice, he focuses primarily on communication design in architecture and space, exhibition design, as well as book design, visual identity, stamp design, and more. He collaborates with many important cultural institutions across Slovakia (Slovak National Gallery, Slovak National Theatre, East Slovak Gallery in Košice, Považská Gallery of Art in Žilina, M. A. Bazovský Gallery in Trenčín, Žilina City Theatre, Pofis, and others), as well as with Slovak visual artists on individual projects (currently, for example: Rastislav Sedlačík, Palo Macho, Jana Hojstričová). Particularly significant is his collaboration with the architectural studio zerozero from Prešov. Among his most important works are exhibition projects and installations such as Model: Museum of Contemporary Art (2024, curator Lucia Gregorová Stach) and Master of Okoličné and Gothic Art around 1500 (2017, curator Dušan Buran) for the Slovak National Gallery; The First Museum of Intermedia II – Between Information and Memory and The First Museum of Unitermedia III – Gentle Force (2022, curator Mira Putišová) for the Považská Gallery of Art in Žilina; the permanent exhibition of M. A. Bazovský (2018, curator Radka Nedomová) for the M. A. Bazovský Gallery in Trenčín; the spatial-communication solution of the Balustrade in the square in Žilina (2014, in collaboration with architectural studio 2021) for the City of Žilina; visual communication in architecture and the navigation system of the cultural centre Kasárne/Kulturpark Košice (2013, in collaboration with architectural studio zerozero Prešov); visual communication in architecture and the navigation system of the Municipal Office in Leopoldov (2022, in collaboration with architectural studio zerozero Prešov); and since 2014 he has been collaborating with the Žilina City Theatre, for which he prepares the visual identity of theatre productions. As one of the authors of the Balustrade project, he received the National Design Award in 2016 in the category of experimental design, and for the Kasárne/Kulturpark project he received the CE.ZA.AR award, the Dušan Jurkovič Award, and the Arch magazine award. In addition, his work has been awarded or nominated in competitions such as Most Beautiful Book of Slovakia, Most Beautiful Stamp of the Year, National Design Award, and Polish Design Award. Alongside his design and teaching activities, he is also engaged in research, publishing, and organizational work in the field of graphic design and visual communication, and is active in cultural and academic diplomacy.

(source: scd.sk/osobnost/marcel-bencik )