Hana Miletić – Felt Workshops XII-XXII, 2022 - en cours

Felt Workshops is an ongoing project and a cumulative work shaped through collective making. It began in 2017 through a collaboration with Globe Aroma, an artistic workspace and cultural meeting place in Brussels that offers space, time and a network to artists in forced displacement. The project draws on a tradition of handwork in Miletić’s family in former Yugoslavia. Her great-grandmother belonged to a weaving group that created not only textiles but also a sense of community. At Globe Aroma, Miletić invited participants to work together on what she calls wet-felted tapestries. The workshops follow a protocol that allows participants to share their stories and trajectories while working with the material. Over the past few months, as part of the Biennale en territoires program, the continuation of the project has connected the Gorge de Loup neighbourhood in Lyon with the Ardèche village of Saint-Pierreville and the Val’Eyrieux community. In doing so, it revives the shared memory of these territories and the connections that once linked them through economic exchanges related to wool and silk. During the 18th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, one of the felted pieces will be shown at the Saint-Pierreville Library as part of the event’s Résonance programme.

Weaving lies at the core of Hana Miletić’s practice. Drawing on her street photography, she creates woven works based on moments of transition in public space. Since 2017, she has developed felting workshops, often with women on migratory paths. Conceived as moments of collective exchange, these workshops enable participants to share their stories and trajectories as they work with material.

This work was created as part of Biennale en territoires. It was the subject of an extended creation project led with the artist Hana Miletić, involving residents of the Gorge de Loup neighbourhood in Lyon’s 9th arrondissement and the Val’Eyrieux inter-municipal community in Ardèche.
During the 18th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, one of the felted pieces will be exhibited at the Saint-Pierreville Library as part of the Biennale’s Résonance programme.