Felt Workshops I-XI

"I used to photograph in a kind of snapshot, street photography way with small camera's, working in a quick, documentary way. I started struggling with what I was doing because I felt as if I was just taking stuff from the street that I was not entitled to. And the process was so quick that most of the time I wasn't really understanding what I was doing or who the community was that I was encountering." Hana Miletić, 2023.

Since 2017, Hana Miletić has been organising felting workshops for people, mainly women, with a migration background. She hosted one in Brussels, for instance, with the artistic work and meeting place Globe Aroma, and one in Vienna with the Vereinigung für Frauenintegration Amerlinghaus. During these public workshops, participants share their stories and experiences while felting wool. This led to colourful felt creations, which Miletić combined into three installations, including Felt Workshops I-XI. They are the result of a collective production process: as in any society, the individual contributions are still discernible, but they also blend together into a final form.

In 2014, Miletić shifted her focus from photography, performance and poetry to weaving and other traditional handicrafts from her native country of Croatia. She explores the social potential of weaving or other textile processes and how they can be used to connect people with different backgrounds and languages. Felt Workshops I-XI reflects her interest in social and economic themes. The patchwork of felt compositions recalls social fabrics or safety nets. Miletić uses the slow felting work to talk about contemporary labour conditions, about acceleration and commodification. At the same time, Felt Workshops I-XI refers to the history of abstract art and to the community art of the 1960s.