THE EVENT OF A THREAD – SKOPJE EDITION
Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje
28.05. – 08.09.2024
mit Ulla von Brandenburg, Kristina Bozurska, Yane Calovski and Hristina Ivanoska, Noa Eshkol, Andreas Exner, Uli Fischer, Zille Homma Hamid, Heide Hinrichs, Olaf Holzapfel, Christa Jeitner, Elisa van Joolen & Vincent Vulsma, Jovan Josifovski, Eva Meyer & Eran Schaerf, Karen Michelsen Castañón, Judith Raum, Franz Erhard Walther, Zorica Zafirovska, Klelija Zivkovic with artworks from the MoCA Skopje Collection: Sonja Dimitrova, Dimche Koco, Jolanta Owidska, Ismet Ramicevic, Lisa Rehsteiner, Mira Spirovska, Dushko Stojanovski, Patricia Velasco Wallin
Curated by Jovanka Popova together with Inka Gressel and Susanne Weiß
The North Macedonian edition of the exhibition “The Event of a Thread”, developed in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, unfolds around the concept of “the event” as a disruption in the established order, a transformation introducing new possibilities, radical trespassing challenging traditional views on what textile art is and has the potential to be. The artists featured engage with the idea of the event as a breach in repressive systems, responding to and embodying historical or social events, inspiring the emergence of new events with their artistic practice.
The research these artists conduct could be considered an event in itself, the result of the process of introducing new materials and techniques in textiles aesthetics, differing from the apolitical views in terms of artwork produced and referring to working with textiles.
The exhibition connects different threads of historical events. The first is the solidarity action originated in 1963, after the devastating Skopje earthquake, when with the support initiated by the Yugoslav cultural scene, and later the global cultural centers of the West and the countries from the East – mirroring Yugoslavia’s political position – not to mention the personal donations of eminent national and international artists, the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje became the abode of a remarkable collection of modern and contemporary art, incorporating textile artworks. Applying a process-oriented approach to creating textile art, potentially societal, sentimental, and politically transformative, stories are not simply documented but rather actively weaved.
In this context, the artworks featured in the Museum collection in Skopje are exhibited not only as testimonies to the lived experiences and memories emerged from the earthquake, rather as a vivid reminder of how necessary are these interrupted threads of global support and empathy networks, transforming the tragic event of personal and collective loss into a transnational solidarity model.
The second thread links global textile narratives conveyed in the artworks of contemporary artists and their engaged response to recent political events manifested in violence, mass displacement, postcolonialism, in addition to social issues related to labor exploitation, gender issues, problems marginalized people face, etc.
The adaptable and transformative nature distinctive of textile, coincide with the challenges the contemporary world poses, times of geopolitical instability and large-scale migrations. In a political climate marked by detachment and cruelty, textile holds the power to evoke reminiscences of earlier heartfelt humane times, to remind us how precious handcrafts are, to call to compassion and solidarity.
Working with textiles suggests a form of disagreement, knitting active resistance for justice and truth, a creative desire to introduce changes to the material and the world around us, done with eloquence and emotions. Accordingly, the visual solutions imparted on the textile relay the message communicated by the artists, a message of escape from the various oppression forms, systematic but also interpersonal.
Both the artworks from the Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje, and those of international and local artists channel their fascination with pre-artistic thinking, and the delicate testimonies of histories weaved by autochthonous cultures, erased later by various colonial and other repressive policies.
Interpreted as such, textile is exploited as a subversive tool transforming the inherited matrilateral knowledge and weaving traditions in contemporary activist practices with a broad range of social engagement, the inflection being on the power of togetherness.
Threads are unpredictable in their trajectory. Each fiber possesses certain strength, but entwined with the multitude, it synchronizes, transforming into a more meaningful part of the whole. Similar to this exhibition of artworks inspired by various philosophies, economies, geographies, art histories and visual languages interweaved in a global “fabric of society”. Experiences acquired from personal and collective tragedies transform themselves into the models of endurance, care for the community and the individual and active solidarity.
Text: Jovanka Popova, co-curator
Foto: Maja Janevska Ilieva
Link: Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje
Katalog (PDF)
Concept and selection: Susanne Weiß, Inka Gressel and Jovanka Popova
Planning and organization: Clea Laade (ifa), Inka Gressel, Susanne Weiß
Technical implementation: Christa Fülbier, Frank Marks, Tomislav Karevski, Jordan Arsovski
Overall graphic design concept: Jakob Kirch, Pascal Storz, Jordan Arsovski
Program and operational coordinator: Bojana Stojmenovska
Graphic design: Iliana Petrushevska
Curators collaborators: Blagoja Varoshanec and Iva Dimovski
Conservators: Ljupco Iljoski and Jadranka Milcovska
Education and Museum Guiding Department: Bojana Janeva
Translation into Macedonian and English language: Julija Micova