E V A P E T R I Č
PUBLIC ART
CONDUIT@EMPATHY — WHERE ART MEETS SCIENCE (NAIROBI, KENYA)
Conduit@Empathy is an art–science object created with SPACE-SI (Slovenian Centre of Excellence for Space Sciences and Technologies), in partnership with C3M (Digital Twin Models) and JHUB at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT). Launched on World Environment Day, it now stands in Cherry Park on the JKUAT campus, bringing satellite views of our planet closer to people and raising awareness of Earth’s condition—our only home.
Equipped with sensors, a camera, and an antenna, the work serves as an interface between local, human perception and the objective satellite view. While the satellite passes over Kenya roughly every five days, Conduit@Empathy records 24/7. Together, these two perspectives reveal discrepancies and feed digital-twin models that improve flood forecasting—especially for flash floods, a persistent challenge in Kenya.
The development of satellite and digital technologies for river-basin management is financially supported by the Republic of Slovenia through CMSR, in collaboration with JKUAT. The project was launched by Dr. Nataša Pirc Musar, President of Slovenia, underscoring its mission to communicate scientific observation through art and to promote responsible water stewardship.
Conduit@Empathy forms part of SPACE-SI’s end-to-end missions connecting satellite and digital technologies for healthier water environments and climate resilience. I am grateful to Prof. Tomaž Rodič, director of SPACE-SI, and his team; to CMSR and the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of Slovenia; and to colleagues at JKUAT for their support and care.
This Nairobi installation is the first of eleven planned “conduits,” a global constellation titled TOTEM FOR HUMANITY. Rooted in my sculpture Earthling—a human shadow abstracted into a lace-inspired pattern that evokes the web of life—each conduit bridges ecological data and public experience, turning information into empathy and shared responsibility.
SECRET GARDEN
@RECYCLED STORIES
Center Vič, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Spring 2025
Eva Petrič, Secret Garden@Recycled Stories art intervention/site-specific installation of assemblages of found, donated and inherited hand crafted works by anonymous creators, recycled into a collective story, at Center Vič, Ljubljana, March 20 - April 20 2025.
What did the garden of our ancestors look like?
What does our garden look like?
What will the garden of the future look like? Will we even have one?
Secret Garden@Recycled Stories is a garden of emotions that grows and blooms with human connections through space and time, intertwining happiness, sadness, gratitude and vulnerability. It is a garden of the past, present and future; recycled voices, desires and traditions, but also a garden of emotions and feelings that are increasingly threatened by the penetration of information technology. Could this be a garden of once-flowering feelings that are now sinking into oblivion?
It consists of hundreds of handmade lace doilies from all over the world – some found at flea markets, others inherited, many without known creators – but each of them carries a purpose, a feeling, a story that connects us into a multi-layered network of humanity.
May this garden connect us with our ancestors, rooted in the present, and inspire us to preserve traditions within the garden of the future.
The Secret Garden@Recycled Stories is a garden that is constantly growing and accepts found and donated laces of all sizes, colors and shapes, helping to build and preserve the collective story of human emotions.
THOUGHTS WITHOUT SKIN,FLOATING
Art intervention at Slovenia Guest of Honoe Pavilion, Frankfurt Book Fair 2023
The installation Thoughts without skin, floating derives from the opus of my recycled lace assemblages, the HEMATOMA series, where as a source of inspiration I recorded my skin in various states (including as a hematoma). I first presented my assemblages as the HEMA TOMA installation in 2011 at the Centro Cultural Borges in Buenos Aires in Argentina at the time of the publication of my novel Box Without kin, Floating, which was then translated into Spanish by the publishing house Ediciones B and presented at the book fair in Buenos Aires. (The book was published in German in March 2024 by Loecker Vienna.) It deals with the political issue of Argentina's los desaparecidos, interwoven into a love story that also discloses how, even if something happens at a later point in time on the other side of the world, these distant, drastic events could have a decisive influence years later and, even spreading to the other side of the globe... Translated into the language of my installations: If a thread in a system tears, all threads vibrate, and the pattern adapts…
Since this time of this first installation, I have created more than 40 space-specific installations of recycled lace, which have been placed in various spaces, from the UN in New York to the Cathedral of St. Stefan in Vienna; from Japan, to the Postojna Cave... 25 selected installations are presented in my monograph, WEBbing, Drava, 2018.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair I am presented also with another medium of art, with my hybrid art book @pple girl story2, to be a Shadow or a Puppet, published and presented by Drava. It is a mixture of an art and contemporary fairytale, which at the same time functions as a visual dictionary of emotions and deals with the phenomena of the transformation of our emotions in the context of the persistence and at the same time encroachment of the digital world, also in relation to books.
COLLECTIVE CORONA ROSE
Assemblage of recycled found lace and hand made lace in a social action during the Covid pandemic lockdown, Friedrichsgrab in St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna, Austria
From March 2020 to May 2023, the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly shaped our daily lives. During this time, especially throughout lockdowns—many aspects of life that once felt normal became impossible. Social interaction was limited, and isolation became a shared experience. The impact was far-reaching and serious. Yet, amidst the challenges, we also discovered what helps us endure: hope, compassion, and a sense of connection.
Artist Eva Petrič created the large-scale Collective Corona Rose during the first lockdown in her native Slovenia. She invited people—particularly traditional lace makers in Idrija—to express their fears and hopes by crafting handmade lace in the shape of rose petals. Eva Petrič assembled these pieces and combined them with old and recycled lace from all over the world to form a single, collective rose
With its thousands of knots, the rose symbolizes the deep and unconditional interconnectedness of all people—especially in times of crisis. Every rose has its thorns, which may wound—but its beauty prevails.
The Collective Corona Rose, growing and blooming along the church wall above the Friedrichsgrab in St. Stephen’s Cathedral, stands as a reminder of how deeply we depend on one another—especially in moments of collective challenge. It invites us to find hope in how we care for one another.
RUBIK'S CUBE
of RECYCLED SHADOWS
& E@MOTION
Museums Platform, Ljubljana, Slovenia, permanent installatio, 2019 - collaboration with the Slovene Ethnographic Museum (SEM) Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Everyone and everything have their own shadows. Whenever shadows encounter each other, they fuse and form new shadows, just as cultures and emotions do. Neither shadows, nor emotions nor cultures can be enclasped - but we can, like in my Rubik’s Cube of Recycling Shadows&E@motions, direct them and interact with them as well as recycle them in an infinite number of ways. The cube is the 3D mutation of my Periodic Table of Shadowed Emotions, which resulted in the permanent interactive installation Rubik's Cube of Recycled Shadows&E@motions at the Museums' Platform Metelkova, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
In front of the Slovene Ethnographic Museum my Rubik's Cube of Recycling Shadows & E@motions illustrates interactions of ideas, people, cultures and new cultures evolving out of these interactions.
STEM CELL POTENTIAL
the Vienna’s 6th district Totem, Vienna, Austria, 2019
Stem Cell Potential with its exposed intricate lace pattern symbolizes the connections between the Vienna’s 6th district inhabitants. Placed into the shadow of Vienna’s 6th district Flak tower (Flakturm), the remainder of the misery of WW 2, Stem Cell Potential functions as a TOTEM - to the many and often invisible ways in which we are interconnected amongst each other. At the same time, it accentuates the Flakturm’s potential for transformation into a TOTEM - the celebration of life.
Stem Cell Potential is the result of translating my Gr@y Matter- language of Shadows images from the "Confident" series into the traditional lace pattern of Idrija. Transferred into lace a pattern, my Stem Cell of Potential figure visualizes and express the interconnectivity within our own selves; our bodies when viewed on the cellular micro level as well as on the macro level of stars.
SOUND CLOUD SONATINA
Sing for Hope, New York, 2019
Sound Cloud Sonatina, my piano incorporated into a cloud of hope travelling all over the world, is my contribution to the biggest public art charity action in New York City, the 2019 Sing for Hope bringing music, art and hope to the places and people in need of these. Clouds fascinate me, they travel around the world. Sometimes they bring hope expressed in sonatinas, sometimes turbulence, expressed in crescendos.
Clouds allude to hope, and express the phenomena of sharing, as they travel around the world sharing what they gather or soak in from one country with its many people, sharing it with their next point of destination. They are ever changing and being part of the water cycle, they help to keep our planet Earth in equilibrium, enabling life on it. They also point to the common responsibility amongst people and nations to take care of our one and only planet Earth.
Music, which all people can relate to and enjoy is the perfect medium with which to express this. It travels around the world and touches everyone it meets.
SAFETY BLANKET
St. John the Divine Cathedral, New York,
Feb. 14 – June 30 2019
Eva Petric's textile assemblages take many forms. Her Collective Heart, also on view in this exhibition, explores connections between personal belongings, memory and communal identity. The soft, flowing shapes of this »safety blanket«, strung from the columns of the Nave, evoke the innocence of childhood, when the importance of finding psychological comfort in transitional objects is perhaps at its peak for emotional well-being.
Isadora Wikinfeld, curator of the Value of Sanctuary exhibition at the
COLLECTIVE HEART
St.John the Divine, New York City, 2019;
Stephansdom, Vienna, Austria, 2016
My Collective Heart, acting as the 2016 Fasting Cloth in the famous gothic cathedral, Stephansdom in Vienna, Austria, and being the central piece of the exhibition The Value of Sanctuary at the St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York City in 2019, is 11m high and 5m wide and spreads over 55 square meters - but actually it is without borders, accepting each and every one. It is made of over one thousand pieces of lace, collected from all over the world and containing countless memories, millions of knots, billions of hours of sowing and an infinite quantity of wishes. It is without limits in its absorption of good intentions and in its spreading of good will.
WHITE wHole
Postojna caves, Slovenia, 2018
WHITE wHOLE, sound/video/lace installation, shining in the Postojna Caves to highlight the 200- anniversary of discovering the most beautiful parts of this underground wonder.
WHITE wHOLE, projecting the importance of nurturing the hidden and unseen depths of our planet Earth as well as the inner worlds of our human forms, stems from the hypothetical assumption in astronomy about the existence of the "white hole" phenomena in the universe. Together with its “counterpart” black hole it represents to me the basic parameters of existentialism.
The installation deals with pressing current themes of borders and values, be these in personal relationships, social relationships as well our relationship with our physical environment, our planet Earth, all these being in the process of incessant construction and deconstruction.
With rice falling upon a constantly appearing and disappearing image I accentuate also the vessel of a relationship, be this between people or among people and nature, our planet Earth, or even within nature itself.
It is incessantly deconstructing and again reconstructing itself – likewise as nature does in the Postojna caves, where the underground river Pivka constantly erodes into the earth, excavating caves, and the water drops coming through the Earth surface fill the caves by forming stalagmites and stalactites.
Our planet Earth provides us freely with all its resources, and the Postojna caves provide us freely with its mysterious beauty. But if we abuse what nature gives us freely and if we do not care about balancing out our greed, if we do not see Earth (or the Postojna caves) as a Whole, we will lose it and we will be unable to restore it to the way it was. The Whole will become just a wHOLE.
ONE WORLD,
A WORLD FOR ALL
United Nations General Assembly Building,
New York, 2018
Being a collection of over 300 hundred stories, memories and emotions embedded into hand-made lace doilies in the process of their making, the giving and receiving of them, the art installation WORLD EMBRYO – One World – A World for All speaks of the co-existence within our world and illustrates that it is a mosaic of many different races and beings.
The installation stems from the artist’s “Hematoma” series, where the artist’s interest lies in the phenomena of so-called collective hematomas which affect all people. The artist Eva Petrič explores the idea of a so-called collective skin and how “we are more than just our visible skin - we are numerous generations intertwined in an intricate and complicated network, a world in which we are interconnected and dependent upon each other.”
“I wanted to associate to the female figures appearing as Mother Earth herself, reflected in every one of us. With the circular form in the middle appearing as a sun, moon, as a mandala, an embryo, a cell, a seed, a planet, our Earth, I wanted to put the focus on the interconnectedness. We, and all that is here on this planet, are subjected to and part of the phenomena of webbing. No one single lace is more beautiful or better than the other, all are needed and important for sustaining the final shape of the lace mosaic. Likewise, all people on this planet, all creatures are needed, and thus all people and creatures are also needed to take care of this planet, to sustain it.”
The work received the Grand Prix of the 6th international fine arts festival in Kranj, Slovenia, in 2017.
COLLECTIVE STAR
installation of found lace collage, light projection, Postojna Caves, 2018
Life is full of choices; each one leading us in new directions, forming new connections, leaving behind new patterns...I’m honored that my Collective Solar Cell was re-exhibited in the wonderful Postojnska Jama Caves , this time, as a Collective Star for the special time of Christmas and beginning of the New Year.
Shining in these very frequently visited underground caves it served as a compass at the turn of the new year. It represented the many emotions of love and care that went into making each and every one of the many separate lace pieces that I have been collecting from all over the world and building a safety blanket with.
TREE of LIFE
one size fits all, a Red Carpet - Tribute Award Winner for 2017 - art intervention at the Red Carpet Showroom in Vienna's Karlsplatz subway lines junctions, Karlsplatz Vienna, Austria, 2017-2018
Tree of life - one size fits all art intervention in the labyrinth of Vienna's Karlsplatz subway system, reminded by-passers of their hearts, the incredible organ sustaining our lives and at the same time being a symbol of that, which defines us as humans - a symbol of love and goodness.
Tree of life, 1 and 2, 2017, are the positives of two real human hearts which were donated by the deceased or their relatives to the Institute of Anatomy of Ljubljana's University Medical School for educational and research purposes. The reason why I placed these two hearts within an art context is to translate them into emotion breeders, to raise awareness for the need of increased empathy in today's time of increased anonymity, which is perhaps most apparent in the labyrinths of the subway environments.
My Tree of life was placed there to catch the glances of the thousands passing the Red Carpet Showroom, at the junction of the subway lines 2, 1 and 4, three levels below the ground of Vienna's Karlsplatz. My intention was to motivate people to look at the heart - yours' mine, his, hers, the others'...during the festive time of the December Holidays.
KUNSTLITFASSAULE
One of the five winners 2016 Salzburg, Austria
Litfasssäulen are advertising cylinders that one can often see in German and Austrian cities and elsewhere as well. They were invented 160 years ago by the German printer Ernst Litfass. The city of Salzburg decided to devote five of the 260 existing ones in this city to the arts. At the 2016s open call my Human Organ Constellation was selected among the five winners. My art intervention was placed at the rotating Litfasssäule on Lindhoffstrasse, not far from the main hospital in Salzburg. There, It showed one of the photographs from my organ transplantation series which I made at Vienna’s University Hospital, the AKH and then reworked and over layered with my shadow, questioning by passers about the borders of our bodies, emotions and solidarity.
I hope that these questions reached into the private world of by passers and provoked them to ask themselves where are the borders of their body and where does "I" end and where does “you" begin, and thus raised the awareness of the importance of organ donation to many people.
ETUDE ABOVE GROUND ZERO
Sing for Hope 2016, New York
my piano wrapped in the emotional cloud of lace, in the frame of the 2016 SING FOR HOPE project in New York City was transferring hope first at the Liberty Plaza, and further at the Castle Clinton National Monument, Battery Park, till June 19th 2016 upon which it was donated to the Timothy Dwight Elementary School in Bronx, New York, to enable the children there to sing for hope.
LIEBE, GLAUBE, HOFFNUNG
Stephansdom, Vienna, Austria, 2016
Love -Belief-Hope, Eden transplanted, my clouds in my art intervention at the Stephansdom in Vienna, Austria, in 2016, were not Nimbo Alto Stratus in the water cycle, but Love-Belief-Hope in the emotions' cycle.
To realize my 2nd art installation at the awe-inspiring gothic cathedral, art monument by itself, me and my team had to overcome the force of gravity. How? With belief, hope, and love, - emotions that have been ingrained in the making, giving and receiving of the thousands of vintage handmade dollies and laces, composing my emotional clouds at the Stephansdom, the largest Gothic Cathedral in Central Europe
My lace works express the idea of inter-connectedness and webbing, which is part of us humans, inside our souls and bodies manifested as a biological as well as spiritual phenomenon. We are not just what we see; we are many past generations, feelings, memories and beliefs. These are not only passed on in our genes, but also manifest themselves in the collective unconscious, in dreams, wishes, and the imprinting of Archetypes, all in our attempt to reach 'Eden and Eternity' – the unity of LOVE, BELIEF, HOPE.
PERSONAL UNIVERSE(S)
art at Bergdorf Goodman store windows, New York, 2015
Personal UNiVERSEs stem from my body of lace assemblages of HEMATOMA series where I took images of my skin in various conditions as a source of inspiration (also in a state of a hematoma). Fascinated from the mirroring of the expo level of outer space in the nano level of cellular and subatomic structures I became interested to look at our skin as being the membrane separating the nano – cellular universe from the stellar star expo universe, making our skins, so to say, IN- between- Spaces. This led to my wish to make an artistic intervention in the place where our skin is of uttermost importance, being the canvas upon which we place our clothes…the Bergdorf & Goodman in New York City seemed the best place for this; to introduce the idea that our skin is so much more than just a color and faithful dairy of our lives. It is a canvas for unique universes from up above and beyond, reflected inside of us making us thus timeless and without borders – questioning where does “I” end and where does “you” begin and where does “I” begin and where does “you” end?
We are not just our skin - and our skin is so much more than us; we are not just personality, chaos, physical beauty, mind, emotions, clothes…. all of these things represent us just for a small period of time, they are always changing- moving- jumping- tricking…but they are not us…WE ARE UNiVERSES, each one of us a Personal Universe, existing parallel to our common universe.
SPIRIT BOX
art intervention at the subway lines' junction at Karlsplatz, Vienna, Austria, 2014
Emotions, visualized by shadows are able to cross all borders - even those of time bringing us back into our past existence - “out of the shadows” - all those not here in body, but of which nonetheless a shadow remains - our memory of them as an echo, taking form inside us as an emotion.
SPIRIT BOX, my art intervention at the All Saints day far down below in the underground, in the body of Vienna’s Karlsplatz U-bahn, functioned as a time travel machine box, as an alter for all those no longer here in body. My SPIRIT BOX stems from my Gr@y matter – language of shadows project where I replaced chemical elements in the periodic table with shadows visualizing emotions. In this way I am attempting to form a language of emotions, highlighting also our ephemeral existence in the context of our physical world.
WHITE as RICE
public sites video projection on Prešeren's Day, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2013
“In her video White as rice the artist Eva Petrič lays Prešeren’s manuscript on the mirror, which reflects, beside the book, also the sky and herself. With rice falling on this image, she accentuates also the vessel, this time not of herself, but of his name. The rice is falling like snow, filling with whiteness is the new meaning also in the title of the work. Rice is falling, as in a wedding, without the prophet on the book of the poet the prophet.
Hands that skillfully and with ease play with white and black rice, draw and write, erase and record the traces of tradition. They sift without the sieve. Changes of point of view change the reading code. The written is no more only black on white, but colorful. The white color contains everything… Prešeren’s verse “when I’ll no longer be”, written by the artist, summon the absent “a record of my pain and of your praise”. Light projections on the front walls of the houses in which Julija and Preseren lived, do not praise nor scorn, yet they heal the wounds …”
Janko Rožič, art director of Srečišče Gallery
and KUD Sestava, Ljubljana, Slovenia
ANGEL DISSECTED
Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2011
The 21st century Angel does not have wings - instead it is a metaphor for empathy, the ability to flow in the current of contemporary space, to acquire nano qualities to pass membranes of all sorts. Angels are reflections of our emotions expressed as shadows, staining us. We are stains, stained by emotions, making us markers of impulses that move through us.
Borges did not see stains, but he did see shadows and heard echoes. Could he hear angels? Are we able to hear the 21st century Angel? The 21st century Angel is an echo; a stain, available to everyone, it is a collection of residues whispering, murmuring, vibrating, luring the 21st century angel to protect, shelter, defend…
Buenos Aires - Centro Cultural Borges on its junction with the Galeria Pacificas shopping centre was the first landing of this acrylic glass cut out contemporary Angel on its way to lure people to empathy - with the Bergdorf&Goodman's 5th Avenue windows in New York City being the second, heading then across the Atlantic to Jean Nouvel's Design Tower in stillwerk Vienna, Austria… and further on towards other cities…
WHITE BOX
Media NOX gallery, public sites art interventions, collaboration with Maja Sivec, Maribor, Slovenia, 2013
»Tumors of globalization and their far-reaching shadows are upgraded by the artist's concept of transferring her exhibition into new spaces, the spaces outside of boxes. >This space is a box; this box is a space, declares Eva Petrič in her statement. Her exhibition is thus not limited solely to the gallery space. Through giant advertisement billboards it extends into the public space and life of Maribor and its citizens. By this Eva Petrič brings back the original value of billboards which have been to a large extent abused predominantly for commercial messages.
Nina Jeza, curator
SPIRAL SHAPE
Succession of the Secession Siren, Kuenstlerhaus Kino
front wall, Vienna, Austria, 2009 – 2010
The space of the K-Haus Kino windows is an aquarium made up of a series of black and white analog photographs on plexi glass with the title Secession Mermaid. Revolving around the spiral shape, the Secession Mermaid series appears at times to be a part of the Secession era's ornamental spiral and at the same time apart from it. Femininity of the female figure placed within the framework of the female architecture of the spiral, appears to exist in the point between useful and mature emotions. It seems to be caught within, but at the same time finding sanctuary within, presenting the feminine or the notion of the feminine as if being within a box - a confession box perhaps. At the same time, it seems to display a red-light box in a monochrome. In this contradiction the line blurs in terms of both the feminine as well as the spiral shape (architecture (ornament)). Is what we see merely an ornament stepping into decoration or the visualization of mistreatment of inner femininity? Is it the woman that is the decorative additive to the spiral shape ornament or the spiral shape ornament that is decoration finding its place as the feminine of the woman?
Enabling the viewer to feel as if he/she is at the same time both viewer and the one being viewed - from inside the window as well as outside of it, it is breaking down the line between inner and outer reality, behaving just like gas which adapts at once to any space filing it to the limit... searching for a way to spread even beyond it to further infect, just as ornaments infect the buildings of the Vienna Secession era - an inspiration for this series.
SECESSION SIREN SERIES
Thermal Temple, Atlantis Water City, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2009 permanent installation
Glass fascinates me, mostly because of its fragility, but also because of the reflections it produces. Every time we look through a window we are interacting with glass, but also with our own inner selves staring back at us. What we see, how we see, depends on how we are feeling inside, underneath our visible skin. So, glass is a kind of mediator between our inside private world and our outside public space. I work with this theme a lot in my photography, video, poetry, installation. Secession siren equation is my interpretation of the city of Vienna, one of my three base locations. I feel surrounded by the echoes and residues of the secession era, echoing loudly even in contemporary Vienna. Everywhere I look, I see, I feel, thus I see art nouveau, not just in the architecture, but also in the ideas. This inspires me. So I created a compartmentalized window, a view for visitors of Atlantis’s Thermal Temple to see this interpretation of Vienna, but in their own unique way. What you see, depends on where you stand, what perspective you take.
GR@Y MATTER
At the Bergdorf Goodman windows, New York, May 30 –June 27 2013
My installation of shadows is an open box, a box without skin, floating. Here you can be the pinball or the pinball player - do you perceive yourself within a body confined as a box? And furthermore, do you perceive this box as a box without skin, floating, capable of moving from “the I” to “the other” and “the other” to “the I“?
The images displayed in the Bergdorf Goodman’s 5th Avenue shop windows stem from my project Gr@y Matter - Language of Shadows, in which I explore the ability of shadows to communicate. My shadows question:
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Why am I I; and why am I not you?
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When does you become I, and when does I become you?
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Is the shadow that I see mine, or is it yours?