Paper.Lab.Berlin Residency, Svetvinčenat, May 2026
'Hematite over Goethite'
Two weeks in the hilltop town of Svetvinčenat, making large-scale handmade paper from plants foraged in the surrounding landscape. The residency extended my ongoing inquiry into self topography, the mapping of self as terrain, through material exploration and the sharing of papermaking processes.
During the residency, I created three works as a personal response to the landscape and women of this ancient place. Together, they carry the title 'Hematite over Goethite', after the geological process by which red iron oxide slowly transforms yellow earth into terra rossa — a slow metamorphosis redolent of the quiet, persistent labour of women shaping and being shaped by the land they inhabit.
'Red Earth'
'Red Earth', 2026
120 X 130 cm
Papier-mache, cotton thread and earth pigment
Drawn to the surface by something I can't yet name, I map the stone tabletop using paper pulp made from old newspapers. Five buckets. Pulping, pouring, pounding. Days fold into one another as I sponge dry and cover against the insistent weather. I sift terra rossa soil into methyl cellulose and brush the paste onto my lifted surface. The topography unifies, inviting my fingertips across it, each small indentation a valley, each rise a peak, something larger than myself.
Mudra Zena
A vessel, egg-like, tensile in its white surface. The opening speaks red earth words, hematite over goethite. A story of black charcoal and holy water, mingled with spells that cure illnesses. Terra rossa words, a form of spell, clear only to those with the wisdom to trust in them.
'Mudra Zena', 2026
Papier-mache, paperpulp and earth pigment
Divlja Čipka
In spring the cow parsley shimmers, a haze of white petals levitating above the red soil. I take a piece of local embroidery and introduce that wildness into it. Cooking, mashing, piping the plant into pulp, tracing the stitchwork of women I will never meet, wishing to mirror something of the soul held in their white works. Divlja Čipka will eventually fade to white, as our own stories fade with time, the shadows remaining.
'Divlja Cipka', 2026
Handmade paperpulp from cow parsley
