Knots and Patterns

Knots and Patterns 2026: Collective Memory Landscapes

Public guided tours of the exhibition:

Thursday, 9. 4. 2026 at 17:00 with Klara Debeljak

Thursday, 16. 4. 2026 at 17:00 with Klara Debeljak - CANCELLED due to illness

Tuesday, 5. 5. 2026 at 17:00 with Zala Orel

Gallery Stolp Škrlovec, Kranj

The exhibition Collective Memory Landscapes marks a milestone of the EU funded project Knots and Patterns, in which three partners from Slovenia, Greece, and Poland explored the textile heritage of the regions in which they are based. In addition to the exhibition, presenting 26 textile and audiovisual artworks, the project has developed a collaborative digital archive of local textile heritages, documenting the creative processes and presenting the outcomes through a digital storytelling tool.

Across three art and research residencies, the project focused on textile heritage as a living carrier of collective memory, shaped through social relations, situated knowledge, and sensory experience. While each context addressed distinct historical and cultural conditions, the shared inquiry revolved around how textile practices transmit memory, identity, sustainable practices and values through both dis/continuity and trans/formation.

Collective Memory Landscapes

An important element of the Polish residency was learning about textile traditions through the senses, for example, the touch of fabric, the smell of wool, and the sound of a spinning wheel. The relationships between communities, heritage experts and artists made the team realise the importance of direct transmission of textile traditions, but also of creative reinterpretation of traditional techniques, motifs and patterns that can be incorporated into the ethno-design trend. The project Textile Landscapes of Pomerania was led by Monika Górska and Aleksandra Paprot-Wielopolska, and implemented by the Department of Ethnography of the National Museum in Gdańsk.

In the Slovenian research, the touch, the smell and the sound had largely disappeared due to the rapid closure and collapse of the textile industry. More challenging than anticipated, the team encountered practices of memory and identity erasure. The residency emphasized the importance of textile heritage as a carrier of collective memory, particularly in relation to underrepresented industrial histories and the lived experiences of workers, many of whom were women. The creative leads of the Tapestry of Tears were Armando D. Cosmos and Klara Debeljak, working in Kranj in collaboration with the BIEN Textile Art Biennial.

The Greek residency approached local textile heritage through an ecofeminist lens and a focus on community learning practices, tracing how weaving is sustained across generations and places. The team explored sustainability within textile material production and beyond, positioning educational modalities at the heart of its continuity, including intergenerational, translocal, and situated learning alongside collective memory and gendered histories of labor. The project Translocal Learning in Women’s Textile Communities was led creatively by Lena Gerothanasi and Yorgos Samantas in collaboration with the Biennale of Western Balkans.

Database Storytelling as an approach

Through a "database storytelling" framework that utilises open-source technologies, the created artworks are documented as linked open data inside a collaborative digital archive and knowledge base (database), ensuring that knowledge is accessible, interoperable, and preserved long-term within a wiki-based ecosystem. A digital storytelling tool integrates the structured metadata, and community contributions as image-anchored annotations, transforming data into narrative, and the documentation into an act of interactive storytelling through the integrated PerVisum tool. https://textileheritages.com/wiki/Main_Page

Exhibition Authors:
Armando D. Cosmos, Klara Debeljak, Lena Gerothanasi, Yorgos Samantas, Mona Rena Górska, Dimitra Stavropoulou, Eleni Charcharidou, Despoina Marmagka, Afroditi Tziletta, Julia Ciunowicz, Laura Wankiewicz, Aleksandra Skorupka, Jadwiga Ligęza, Inka Fischer, Teja Duhani, Lana Turnšek, Katja Kranjc, Luka Podgoršek, Kaja Rakušček, Sara Petrushevska, Ana Ferjanc, Dragan Hristov, Maria García, Penelope Demou, Olga Katsouki, Katerina Giannakou, Maria Diamanti, Arseni Thomoula, Olga Dritsa, Giangkoulis Savvidis, Paraskevi Pappa, Rena Alexandridi, Apostolia Psilou, Irene Skandalou

Residency Authors:
Anna Ratajczak-Krajka, Krystyna Weiher-Sitkiewicz, Urszula Kokoszka, Aleksandra Paprot-Wielopolska, Mariana Ziku, Klara Debeljak, Zala Orel

Curator: Zala Orel

Exhibition Design: Lovro Ivančić

Interactive web platform development: Mariana Ziku