EXHIBITION: MARIANA PENDE: FORMS IN MAKING
OPENING: 19/09/2026, 19.00
On Saturday APOTEKA – Space for Contemporary Art is opening the exhibition Loops, threads and loose ends by artist Mariana Pende. It is the artist’s first presentation in Croatia,introducing new textile based works and hand weaving into her artistic practice.
Forms in Makingby artist Mariana Pende stem from her recent artistic production and exploration centring around the question of how materials, technologies, body and sound can open up space for a different understanding of work, production and imagination.
Pende examines and connects different media, such as textile and weaving, drawing, video, object and installation, challenging their boundaries and material conditions. The focus of the latest cycle is a study of the material, sound, technology and work process, as well as traces of the process making them: threads, loom, constructions, sound records and elements being formed in the artist’s studio and workshop. What is visible now is only a fragment of the future entirety.
In that sense, Forms in Making are born at the crossroads of the history of technology and women’s handiwork, i.e. the heritage of women’s work and its often invisible role in the development of technology. From textile workshops with Bauhaus students to industrial factories employing thousands of women for decades, textile becomes more than just a material: it is a space conjoining body, work, technology, discipline and social relations. The mechanical rhythm of the loom, its repetitiveness and automatization become a starting point for a visual music and an experimental soundscape in the making, turning the weaving processes into sound structures, rhythms and scores. The thread line thus meets the line of the sheet music; the repetition of the mechanical movement becomes a composition. Although the works are based on a powerful visual presence and precise abstract forms, their experience stretches beyond the optical. Sound, materiality and tactility activate different manners of perception and create a space which is not only a place of watching, but also of listening, movement and senses. The installation becomes a bridge between different systems – between image and sound, body and machine, material and information, history and present.
Branka Benčić (from a correspondence with the artist, January 2025)
Mariana Pende’s artistic practice explores weaving as a medium that bridges tradition, experimentation, and sound. In her practice, the loom becomes not just a tool, but an instrument whose rhythm and repetition establish a dialogue between past and present. Weaving becomes an exploration of structure, transparency, and density, through which warp and weft form dynamic spatial compositions.Influenced by constructivism and minimalist music she investigates visual and auditory patterns through structure transparency and density.
In collaboration with the Faculty of Textile Technology in Zagreb, she develops projects that explore ecological approaches to weaving, connecting historical techniques into dialogue with contemporary experimental processes.
Currently, the inclusion of the Trgovišće Textile Factory enables the practical implementation of her concept of working on the Jacquard loom ,further deepening the fusion of hand and industrial weaving within the framework of sustainable contemporary production (Mariana Pende, artist statement)
Mariana Pende is an artist whose practice explores the economic, social, political, and ecological issues of contemporary society through sculpture, installation, sound, and video. In her work, she develops original materials and spatial interventions, investigating the relationship between material, architecture, and public space. She graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice in 2008, where, during her studies, she participated in the Atelier Aperti program of the 51st Venice Biennale (2005). She participated in the exhibition Point of Interrupted Departures as part of the 58th Venice Biennale (Croatian Pavilion, 2019), and in 2023 presented the site-specific installation Dance De Luxe together with Olaf Nicolai at Gallery Bačva, HDLU, in Zagreb.
In 2025, she participated in the artistic residency and exhibition Common Threads at Kunsthaus Dahlem in Berlin, after which the project was presented as part of BienalSur 2025 in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art of Oaxaca (Mexico).
She has held solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Istria in Pula, and the Glyptotheque of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb. She has participated in numerous international group exhibitions across Europe and the United States, and her works are held in public and private collections. She lives and works in Zagreb.