QUEERING FOLKLORE: OUR HISTORIES

Art campaign presentation
In Slovenian and English

On the initiative of the City of Women, the Koroška Pride LGBT+ organisation established contact with Dutch artists Bambi van Balen (from the collective Tools for Action) and Max*ine Vajt. Together, they designed and carried out the Queering Folklore campaign with a view to strengthening the Carinthian LGBT+ community by introducing queer interpretations to Slovenian traditionally painted beehive panels. The art campaign presentation will begin with Bojana Rogelj Škafar’s lecture Painted Beehive Panels Between Heritage and Contemporary Creativity (in Slovenian) and close with a discussion in English moderated by Sara Šabec.

The reinterpreted motifs of the beehive panels – traditionally religious, patriarchal, sexist – also pave the way for a reinterpretation of protest. Scattering these wooden tiles across the public spaces of Slovenj Gradec during the Pride Parade 2022 meant finding a place for queers in a distinctive local craft; it enables an easy-to-learn format of artistic-activist expression that can be easily replicated – thus allowing queers not only to express ourselves, but also to connect with each other, creating a stronger and more resilient community. Not just to “rainbow-colour” something so status quo-ish, but to take that statement to all corners of the town – schools, churches, parks –, to demand a voice for queer herstories: a place for us in the past and in the future.

– Tools for Action & Koroška Pride

Bojana Rogelj Škafar, Koroška Pride, Bambi van Balen, Max*ine Vajt

Co-production: City of Women, Koroška Pride and Tools for Action
Organisation: City of Women as part of the project Power, funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, in co-operation with Bunker – Old Power Station
Support: Erasmus+, Ministry of Culture, Municipality of Ljubljana.