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\u201cOne day you find yourself here: in a vast world, surrounded by the unknown. Did you choose this place, or did you end up here by chance, like a piece of polystyrene carried by the current and left on an unfamiliar shore?\u201d So begins the text<\/em> by Sa\u0161ka Kremenec and Katerina Ablamskaya, organisers of the Balkan Textinnale in Serbia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For me, the image of a drifting piece of polystyrene turned out to be unexpectedly precise. It\u2019s a strange material: repellent, alien, nearly indestructible, always in sight, irritating by its very presence; somehow more honest than the rubbish that sinks to the bottom. And yet, in extreme conditions, polystyrene is indispensable: it keeps warmth in and keeps you afloat. In these contradictions\u00a0I recognised my own state over the past few years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am on my way to Luton Airport, from where I will fly to Belgrade in three hours. This morning, London is wrapped in fog, and I especially love it like this; I have no desire to leave. Half of my suitcase is taken up by Loop Poetry, the installation taking part in Textinnale. Since emigrating, fabric has become my main medium, partly because it is simply practical: it is mobile and easy to store. Five panels, each over two metres high, fit easily into hand luggage. Alongside them, my suitcase carries two stories that have unfolded over several years.<\/p>\n\n\n The first, about the loss of memory, began in 2016. Our entire family photo archive, containing photographs dating back to the 1930s, many of them retouched by hand, was accidentally thrown away with the rubbish. For several years, I worked to reconstruct it by collecting images from relatives. Many had survived thanks to the old tradition of sending photographic prints instead of postcards. In 2022, this project became a book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second story is about memories found by chance. In 2023, walking through Burgess Park in London, I came across photographs scattered across a bridge. The bridge was called \u201cBridge to Nowhere\u201d, and the photographs, wet from the rain and partly damaged, looked like fish scales. I took them home. This is how Loop Poetry<\/em> was born, becoming my own journey through time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The theme of this year\u2019s Textinnale is DRIFTLANDS. Its three venues drift like islands, those same pieces of polystyrene washed up on an unfamiliar shore. Yet each has its own character, its own atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Woonder Studio carries a sense of fragility, pain and tenderness. There I had the chance to hold A Speechless Diary<\/em> \u2014 a book of white fabric, in which hand-embroidered abstract patterns stand in for text \u2014 by my London-based fellow artist Olga Klimovitskaia. The black thread patterns remind me of a morning when I spotted a centipede on my white bedsheet and leaped up screaming, trying to shake it off as it darted around in search of escape. At some point, our fears, mine and hers, seemed to merge. I sense that same tension through the patterns of A Speechless Diary<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n At Nordistica Gallery, something closer to fairy-tale is taking place. The atmosphere is set by mythical creatures on organza (a fine transparent fabric) created by the Serbian artist Teodora Ne\u0161kovi\u0107. At the entrance\u00a0I am greeted by a black-and-white photograph by Sveta Sher, printed on fabric, whose sensibility feels close to my own. Trees grow through a rubbish dump; roots intertwine with torn pieces of cloth in an apocalyptic landscape. The wind moves the fabric, and the work comes alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The enchantment deepens when I unexpectedly join an evening choir in the gallery. We sit in a circle, yarn roots hanging above us, masks looking down from the walls. We sing in many languages. At one moment, I begin to cry, remembering my childhood, when my family used to gather in the evenings in much the same way and sing.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ar_02.jpg\")
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