Jasminka Končić

SUBVERSIVE EMBROIDERIES: I SHOULD HAVE – I COULD HAVE – I DIDN’T…

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March 8th - 24th 2026

exhibition opening: Sunday, March 8th at 11AM

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The exhibition Subversive Embroidery: I Should Have – I Could Have – I Didn’t… is an intimate record made in the medium of textiles. Primarily, the exhibition can be read as a feminist-connoted artwork. The work problematizes the questioning of women’s personal freedom of decision-making and action, their independent making of the right decisions, as well as the stereotypical reception of criticism without considering the real weight of the words spoken by the other party. The exhibition speaks of the often silent and silenced answers to questions that invade the sphere of the intimate inner space of the female personality. What is spoken is often subject to patterns of learned male-female behavior and their unconscious acceptance, both by those who say them and by those who receive them.

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The exhibition is conceived in the form of directed questions and comments and unspoken, inaudible answers to them. Through the form of three aggressively and insolently connoted questions and passively given answers, the goal is to raise awareness of established forms of male-female verbal communication that can develop into unhealthy forms of communication. Likewise, the hand-embroidered answers contain regrets for everything that was not done, and perhaps should have been.

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Questions and comments are printed in white text on red rough mats, while answers-reactions are embroidered in the form of textile embroidery and tapestry in red and pink. In this way, we get the contrast of two textile media, production techniques (serial-produced doormat and hand-woven textile embroidery) as well as the contrast of colors. The textiles come in three pairs where a mat placed on the floor follows the response in the medium of hand embroidery on the wall. The pairs are as follows: YOU SHOULD - I SHOULD, YOU COULD - I COULD, WHY YOU DIDN'T - I DIDN'T.

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The colors that run through the exhibits are red, pink and white. While the mats have uniformly red backgrounds and the text is consistently written in white, the colors of the background and letters change on the tapestries. In the color scheme, there is a rule of repeating aggressive red in both the tapestries and the mats, while the “feminine” pink is used exclusively on the tapestries, as is the neutral white that was used exclusively on the mats.

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The medium of the textiles used in the realization of the works for the exhibition is twofold: industrially made mats with a rough texture with a defined typography that serves to make the text easy to read, while hand embroidery in the form of a tapestry represents an intimate, gentle writing, there is no strict typography, but the design of the text is defined by the limitations of the textile medium and the individual design of the letters, creating an individual writing and personal typography.

 

 

 

 

 

Jasminka Končić (1973, Zagreb) graduated in graphic design in the class of Professor Miroslav Šutej at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb in 1997. She completed her postgraduate studies in 2012 at ALUO (Academy of Fine Arts and Design - University of Ljubljana, Slovenia). She received her master's degree in the class of Assoc. Prof. Alen Ožbolt on the topic Two-dimensional textile materials and processes of translating them into three-dimensional sculptural forms. In the same year, she enrolled in doctoral studies in the field of fashion design at NTF (Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia), from which she received her doctorate in 2019 with the topic The use of the language of fashion and clothing in contemporary art under the mentorship of Assoc. Prof. Dr. sc. Nadja Zgonik. She is a full professor at the Faculty of Textile Technology, University of Zagreb, where she teaches courses in the field of fashion and textile design. She is a member of the Croatian Society of Fine Artists (HDLU, Zagreb). She has received several awards for her artistic and pedagogical work. In her artistic works as well as in her theoretical research, she studies the role of the language of fashion and clothing in contemporary visual art. Through the medium of clothing and textiles and her theoretical research, she examines the connotative meaning of clothing, fashion and anti-fashion in the field of 20th century art movements and contemporary artistic practice, placing a special focus on the performative character of clothing fashion.

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Program curator: Jasmina Šarić / Exhibition setup: Jasmina Šarić, Jasminka Končić / Assistants: Željka Ivančić, Unda Kreišmane / Graphic design: Kristina Tešija​