Take a Breath is an outdoor exhibition by Alma Čače that brings abstract works inspired by landscape to three billboards across Split, inviting passersby to pause amidst the rush of the city.
If you’re driving or walking around some of Split’s busiest streets this October, you might stumble upon billboards that, for a change, don’t promote, don’t ask you to buy or consume a certain product. If you notice them, and if you stop, observe and think about their meaning for a second — their purpose has already been fulfilled.
These billboards are a part of an outdoor exhibition titled “Take a Breath”, by Split-based artist Alma Čače. The project introduces contemporary art into places where we normally expect advertising, creating a small interruption in the everyday fast-paced rhythm of the city.
Split, as the second-largest city in Croatia, is experienced through constant movement — traffic, tourism, construction, advertising, people coming, going and passing through — and the billboards usually contribute to that visual noise. Here, they do something different: they ask nothing from us. There is no product to buy, no information to absorb and no particular knowledge of contemporary art required. They simply create a moment to pause, allowing us to breathe in and breathe out.
By moving the exhibition outside the gallery and into the everyday visual landscape of Split, this project also changes the way we encounter art. There is no entrance, no formal opening event, nor walls that would prevent accessing the artworks from outside. The city streets, thus, become the exhibition space itself, and the encounter with art happens at random times and days, whenever the viewer is passing by the billboards. Each viewer interprets the work on their own terms, as part of their existing relationship with the city.
This encounter, moreover, works not only on personal, but also ecological level: looking at traces of landscape in the midst of the city can create a small mental distance from everyday pressures, but also remind us that our own wellbeing is tightly connected to the environments we inhabit.
The three billboard works are a continuation of Alma Čače’s artistic practice described as abstract expressionism, which intertwines with nature and is marked by experimentation with material and form.
In her work, nature is not simply a subject to be represented, but becomes part of the process itself. Čače creates handmade brushes and tools from natural and recycled materials, using them to translate traces of the landscape into abstract compositions.
Her process is intuitive and open to unpredictability, allowing for space where nature can influence the finished work. The marks retain the evidence of movement, material and gesture rather than being polished into perfectly controlled forms. The works evoke fragments of the Dalmatian landscape, especially the artist’s native island of Vis — its karst, sea and geological layers.
Presented on billboards, these works enter a completely different context. The slow, organic rhythms of the landscape meet the speed and overwhelming visual intensity of the city. They remind the passersby that there is more to life than just sticking to schedules and completing tasks, and that the real connection is closer than we think. Peace of mind, rest and solace to whomever is needed lie in the natural metabolisms that surround us, which we so easily forget when we are burdened by chores and obligations.
In this sense, Čače’s artistic process and the setting of the works come together around the same idea: allowing nature more agency in the spaces we inhabit — an increasingly urgent proposition in a time of rising temperatures and growing threats to our mental and physical health.
Alma Čače, Metabolism (pink), 2020, mixed media
Alma Čače, Metabolism II, 2021–2023, acrylic on canvas
Alma Čače, Metabolism (red), 2022, mixed media
The exhibition unfolds across three locations in Split:
• Intersection of Poljička and Dubrovačka streets — Work “
• Matice hrvatske street, next to the overpass — Work “
• Vukovarska street, Bol — Work “
The billboard is one of the most recognisable visual elements of the contemporary city. We are used to seeing it tell us what to buy, where to go or how to live. It is part of the visual background of our everyday lives — something we often pass without consciously looking at. “Take a Breath” uses this familiar visual language and infrastructure, but shifts its purpose.
The traces of the natural world here do not simply appear as paintings, but as sensations, gestures and fragments of landscape within an environment shaped by rush and consumption. In this sense, the project approaches ecological awareness through perception rather than explanation. It does not tell the viewer what to think about nature or deliver a direct ecological message. Instead, it creates a moment to become a little more attentive – to ourselves and the world around us.
Perhaps this is where the exhibition’s invitation to “take a breath” extends beyond the individual. The spaces we inhabit also affect how we feel and how we move through the day. A city with less visual noise and more greenery can offer moments of relief from constant visual stimulation, while trees and other forms of vegetation also help cool the urban environment and make it more comfortable to live in during summers. At a time when extreme heat is becoming difficult to ignore, creating spaces that allow both people and nature to breathe feels increasingly necessary.
Čače’s interventions, therefore, invite us to notice what is usually overlooked, while raising a broader question about the public spaces we share: what do we choose to see, what do we choose to make room for, and what might our cities feel like if we allowed more space for the natural world within them?
The “Take a Breath” exhibition is open until October 31, 2026. The exhibition is free of charge and can be encountered from the above mentioned streets.
The “Take a Breath” project was funded by the City of Split.
Split
Intersection of Poljička and Dubrovačka streets; Matice hrvatske street, next to the overpass; Vukovarska street, Bol