Mending the Invisible 2024/25
Interweaving stories and intertwining threads, embroidering the map and the future, weaving new friendships and expanding possible realities. This time, Mending the Invisible seeks to address reparative practices through a persistent imagining of the future as utopia. By resisting the dystopian fear of what is to come, by resisting the despair that it is too late. The utopian future, as it is drawn or written, and ultimately also embroidered, thus becomes a map of moments of mending in time and space.
CREDITS
- Concept for the multi-year project Mending the Invisible: Ivana Müller and Bojana Kunst
- Workshop leaders for the 2024/25 season: Jedrt Maležič, Ana Čigon, Petra Korent
- Production: Bunker, Maska, Orla
- Supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, City of Ljubljana, Institut Français
WORKSHOP AT THE LJUBLJANA CENTRE RETIREMENT HOME – TABOR UNIT
24–27 February 2025, Ljubljana Centre Retirement Home – Tabor Unit
13 March 2025, Ljubljana Centre Retirement Home – Tabor Unit
Drawings of the Future
What will the future look like that belongs to other generations? Free “buscopters” driven by horses will be whizzing through the air, we’ll be able to pull bridges right out of our pockets, and all squirrels will be able to enforce the noise ban in their forests.
The residents of the Ljubljana Centre Retirement Home – Tabor Unit, with an average age of 80+, spent a week with their mentor, Ana Čigon, creating and mixing images of the coming years, thinking about animals, infrastructure, transport and food that will patch up today’s urban wounds. The ideas were buzzing, but the embroidering of these images will be left to the younger generation!
Workshop mentor and author of the drawings: Ana Čigon
Ideas: Bojan Robić, Mimi Pučko, Karolina Sotler, Nada Bohinc, Marija Golob, Mija Jezeršek, Ružica Vučković, Jožica Novak, Stevan Banjanac, Tadeja Verdnik, Marija Đorđević, Željka Zabrič, Milan Dugandžija
Executive production: Bunker
Producer: Klara Drnovšek Solina
Thanks to: Ljubljana Centre Retirement Home – Tabor Unit, Anica Albreht
WRITING WORKSHOP ON THE EXPERIENCE OF TRANSITION
March–May 2025, Ljubljana
The intimate stories of people who have had to manage and dedicate part of their lives to their own sexual transition, whether for medical or social reasons, have often remained untold. And when they do emerge in the course of writing, word after word feels like a stitch that gradually mends the fabric of expression. The possibilities of mending are endless, sometimes transcending reality and reaching into futurism, speculative writing, even utopia.
The creative writing workshop, which will encourage the participants to write fiction and autofiction, as well as poetry, will be mentored by Jedrt Maležič and will focus on the (lived) experiences of non-cisnormative (trans) people.
Mentored by: Jedrt Maležič
Expert on inclusive language: Linn Julian Koletnik
Participants: selected participants of the writing workshop
Executive production: Maska
Producer: Nastja Kotnik Minik
EMBROIDERY SESSIONS
If time passes in its own discrete units, measured in one way or another but difficult to speed up or slow down, then waiting for the future may be pointless – it has to be patched up (or in this case embroidered) today! Well, maybe next Friday, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (MSUM), at the exhibition Picture (a) City, where the embroidered map of Ljubljana is currently hanging. Created in the first year of the Mending the Invisible project, it currently depicts the stories of the past and the present, as revealed by the interlocutors of last year’s season of Mending the Invisible, as a kind of archive and at the same time a list of acupuncture marks made by embroidery needles. And with the new season of Mending the Invisible, the embroidered map will get a new layer – a layer of the future!
Map embroidery will take place every Friday in April and May at the MSUM. The embroidery sessions will be open – everyone is welcome, regardless of your past, present, future or embroidery skills. Mentor Petra Korent will make sure that your acupuncture stitches are therapeutic for you as well as for the canvas, and the motifs will be provided by the participants of the workshop at the Ljubljana Centre Retirement Home and the creative writing workshop.
You are cordially invited to embroider, chat and share a utopian future with us!
WORKSHOP SCHEDULE
Friday, 4 April, 2pm–6pm
Friday, 11 April, 2pm–6pm
Friday, 25 April, 2pm–6pm
Friday, 16 May, 2pm–6pm
Friday, 23 May, 2pm–6pm
Friday, 30 May, 2pm–6pm
Mentored by: Petra Korent
Executive production: Bunker
Producer: Klara Drnovšek Solina
Thanks to: Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana
The embroidered map is part of the exhibition Picture (a) City, curated by Igor Španjol.
PRESENTATION AT THE MLADI LEVI FESTIVAL
The Mladi Levi Festival will once again provide a venue where all the activities, stories, anecdotes and patched-up holes of Mending the Invisible 2024/25 will be presented in an as yet unknown form.
And then we start all over again!
Ana Čigon
Ana Čigon is an artist that works in the fields of visual arts, film and performance. Her projects tackle social issues and often contain elements of humor, irony and satire. She presents her works at solo and group exhibitions in Slovenia and internationally. She received the OHO Group Award for her video art work, while her documentary, experimental films and animations have been part of competition programs at numerous international film festivals.
Jedrt Maležič
Jedrt Maležič is a freelance writer and literary translator from Ljubljana. She graduated from the Department of Translation Studies at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana and has been translating various types of literature since 2007. In 2016, she began writing original fiction and has since published three collections of short fiction – Težkomentalci (“Heavymentals”), Bojne barve (“War Paint”) and Dvoliki (“Two-Faced”) – and three novels – Vija vaja ven (“Eenie, Meenie, Miny, Moe”), Napol morilke (“Almost Murderer”) and Križci, krožci (“Noughts and Crosses”). She won the Nodier award for best literary translation for her translation of Virginie Despentes’ novel Vernon Subutex 2. Her original works have received several nominations (Best Debut Award and The Novo Mesto Award, Kresnik Award, Kritiško Sito Award, Maruša Krese Award).
Petra Korent
Petra Korent’s main focus is illustration. She first presented her work to a wider audience in 2016 with her solo exhibition at DobraVaga Gallery. Since then she has been actively involved in group and solo projects and exhibitions throughout the Balkans. She is a member of the Podmladek art collective. In her art, she uses a playful approach and humour to explore and record moments of her everyday life. She sees her creative work as a kind of diary, in which she continues to express her thoughts, feelings and experiences through line drawings and other media, which she constantly builds upon.