Brankica Žilović: Séisme

Born in Serbia, Brankica Žilović moved to France to study at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, where she developed a unique approach combining traditional and contemporary techniques. She unfolds a universe where memory, territory and transmission are woven right into the material. Using textiles, embroidery and hybrid materials such as concrete and paper, she explores notions of borders - be they geographical, political or intimate - and questions what remains and what disappears.

“What will we reject and what will we preserve through historical memory and the transmission of heritage? What will become a ruin, an artifact or an archaeological relic. From an aesthetic point of view, this can be seen as an ever-changing cartography of the world, which actually introduces a series of questions: what is the individual? What is the collective?”

Brankica Žilović is inspired by textile traditions and stories woven throughout history. Marked by her Serbian origins and her background in France, she draws on multiple references: the heritage of craft skills, the memory of the conflicts that shaped the Balkans, but also philosophical and literary thoughts. In particular, her work dialogues with Edouard Glissant's reflections on creolization and the interconnection of cultures. “We need to weave our ability to live together, and textiles are a means of expressing this: through their elasticity, their color, their resistance.”

In Rennes, artist Brankica Žilović presents a body of work in which thread becomes a tool of narrative and repair. In her imaginary cartographies, she deconstructs known spaces to recompose new ones, questioning the fragility of landscapes, whether geopolitical or interior. Her works, part remnant of the past, part historical object, testify to her desire to preserve memory while reinventing the way we understand the world.

Brankica Žilović's work will also be on view this spring at the Villa Médicis in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés and this summer at L'Art dans les Chapelles, in Bretagne, Morbihan.

Through the Tout Monde series, the artist fuses photography and concrete to question memory and erasure, transforming damaged archives into reinvented concrete blocks, stitched and restored with gold thread. “I use concrete blocks that are simply amalgams of damaged archival photos, then sewn and restored with gold thread or gold leaf, then cast in concrete. These little blocks speak of vestiges or snippets of a world we know or as it no longer exists. Repairing and restoring is a work of resilience, as if I wanted to ward off the definitive disappearance of our memories.

While his works question erosion and trauma, they also tend towards renewal. “Every stitch in my work is proof of my existence. The gesture of suture is a gesture of repair. This approach to textiles, rooted in material and memory, now extends to new experiments, towards a more ecological and sustainable design: “I'd like to explore other materials, integrating innovations in bio-design and textile engineering. How can we integrate the question of the living? How can we create new biotechnological tools?

Brankica Žilović proposes a new cartography of the world, where every seam, every suture, every trace questions who we are and what we leave behind.

"Séisme", Brankica Žilović's first solo exhibition at Oniris gallery, to be discovered in Rennes from April 26 to June 7, 2025.

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