Slovenia: Small but Dangers and Lea Culetto
From aesthetic criticism to sustainable practices regarding textile industry and the position of women.
Small but Dangers (SBD) are Simon Hudolin-Salči and Mateja Rojc. They never present their work individually, but exclusively as the work of the Small but Dangers tandem. They live and work in Cerkno, a small town in the west of Slovenia, surrounded by high hills and dark forests, where there are no “important” art institutions and very few colleagues who deal with contemporary art and other activities of critical reflective influence on our society. This relative detachment helps them to take a critical attitude towards contemporary art, which is quite centralized.
Since they usually avoid creating works with explicit social themes, the theme of the SA!R program presents them with a serious challenge. The political, social and ecological situation in which they/we live, requires explicit social engagement. A society in which the next generations would live justly, in solidarity, with a rich natural environment, needs to be built today. However, it seems to them/us, that the art they/we deal with is too embedded in power relations for our voice to be equal to everyone else’s. Manipulation of the contents of art from a position of power is a serious problem. Therefore, the artistic tandem implements a more concrete form of critical social engagement elsewhere. Anonymous, outside of any kind of institutionalized art on the streets with various forms of street art. They work mainly on aesthetic criticism. On aestheticized objects through which they create voids in thinking. Gaps that allow the manipulation of valid frameworks of language and thought. Through media manipulation, the concept of sustainability has become an empty sign on which very diverse ideas can be attached. From reactionary to libertarian. Therefore, they see their role in opening the visual language that represents this concept to imagination. It’s not about them creating new ideas of sustainability by themselves, nor is it about the audience being able to. They will create a collection of objects that will not allow a concept to be frozen in one specific meaning, but will provoke constant search and questioning. They will build the project on the belief that the fundamental concept of sustainability is extremely precarious.
Lea Culetto is working as a self-employed intermedia artist. She works in the field of visual arts, with an emphasis on feminism. Using textiles and mixed media, Culetto creates objects and installations.
She is interested in textile production, fashion and the position of women in this matter. Her main focus for the last few years is the position of female body in the society, main media she works with is textile and she often incorporates traditional women manual skills such as sewing, knitting and embroidery and combine them with contemporary topics. This all goes hand in hand with sustainability. During pandemic we could see a rise of different online platforms promoting handmade items often made from recycled materials by indigenous women all around the world. Tourism was in decline and they tried to survive by selling items online. Items such as home decor but mainly clothes with traditional techniques made by tedious hand labour. We as artists are expected, even forced by galleries, to constantly produce new work, that is capitalism at its best. For this work we are only paid if chosen for exhibition, which we all know is not much and we cannot survive only doing that. So, our job is ironically unsustainable. If chosen, she would like to focus her time during residency to explore and research sustainable practices regarding fashion, textile industry, tradition and the position of women in the matter. Her focus will be on transforming our view on tradition and norms, but also question the system we live in and try to explore new ways of survival.