Garaža Kamba

Do you remember worrying about black cats crossing the street, your parents repeating nothing ventured, nothing gained, your “searches” for a needle in a haystack?

I believe that various folk wisdom, sayings and beliefs marked most of our childhoods, while they were even more present in older generations. Noticing my enjoyment of phrasemes, idioms, and proverbs I try to actively use them in my own speech. This feeling has made me happy for a long time, sometimes bringing a sense of triumph when, in company, I would perfectly match a “statement” to a given situation. I also noticed that people around me, whether younger or older, commonly react positively, often with wistful recollections of their own parents, grandparents, teachers and neighbors.

“I was sewing, my needle broke… And then the whole world opened up.” – says textile and visual artist Iva Čukelj, starting a conversation about her new artistic research, Magic of a Thread. A common situation prompted her to look for folk beliefs about a broken needle, and thus she found herself in a strange world intertwined with tradition, symbolism and mythology. Artistic research explores needles and pins, fingers and scissors, threads and cushions, garments and work processes, social relations and related rituals. However, the emphasis is not on the art of sewing and making, but on intangible artifacts that have noted and reflected individual and collective realities in the background for centuries.

Today, we too often dismiss old customs and so-called superstitions, forgetting that the oral tradition characterizing them has long been one of the rarely available methods by which an entire logic of life and accumulated knowledge was conveyed in a simple and memorable way. Iva, therefore, patiently collects them into an artist book, not weighing between different cultures, sources and people, nor the occasional contradiction.

By casting a wide net, she strives to preserve the entire range of symbols, thoughts and sayings and further broaden them by working with the community on which she does not impose one correct version, but is interested in personal interpretations and reflection, in dialogue. Simultaneously in this process which also encompasses her previous art and educational work, she aims to bring awareness to the value of oral and generational tradition. To the quiet, unobtrusive and omnipresent driving energy of the world and man.

Touch of a Thread is precisely such a woven atmosphere with which Čukelj envelopes the exhibition space. It is less spatial and temporal, than it is intellectual and procedural, in other words – the space of imagination. The unadulterated possibility and desire for action that comes spontaneously, intuitively and moves freely among bricks and beams, among layers and people. And which is not only hers, but encompasses the residue of what has been transferred, gathers the uniqueness of others, reflects the given and gentle fighting spirit. An installation which takes its forms and motifs in action, duration, the collected experience and reflection. In a seemingly simple cushion, richly decorated, which, following the Japanese ceremony Hari-kuyō, celebrates the craft and thanks broken needles, providing them with a soft space to rest. Touch of a Thread transforms Kamba’s space into a dreamy, almost magical representation of a micro universe dotted with spontaneous impressions and focused ideas of both the artist and her collaborators and participants of the residency associated workshops.

And therein lies the beauty of intertwining, while time is the determinant for collecting oral and written material, it is also the principle of the spatial installation. While language is the form and substance of research, the same is inherited in the work. Without continuity, there isn’t. And in the displaced cruelty of reality, it turns again and again and returns to the old, that is, to the new; all that is, is the history of what was and will be. And imagination rests on a different combination of the known and imagined, it is only a question of a new composition, which is the question greater than civilization. Imagination and creativity, like manual labor and tradition, rest on the courage of endeavour, even if it is not perfect. The history of the world, and therefore of man, is nothing more than a brave attempt.