I know I need to move whether it´s backward or forward

As the title of this duo diploma show suggests, there is a lot of movement going on. It is experienced through memories, space, time, and life stages; its linearity is also felt in the main medium both artists work in- yarn. The two authors are essentially protagonists of the same coin, but on opposite sides: one flips to design, and one to art, yet both tell the story of movement in which pauses exist, but time doesn’t stop. A common thread connecting the twos’ works is exhibited alongside one another.

Exhibition Title: I know I need to move whether it´s backward or forward
Location: Design Studio ÚĽUV, Dobrovičova 13, Bratislava
Opening hours: Monday, Thursday, Friday | 2:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Duration: June 4 – July 31, 2026
Exhibiting artists: Pavlína Árendášová, Viktória Bakušová
Curator: Jelisaveta Rapaić

Viktoria started her journey collecting objects she found on her daily walking path, and Paula collected children’s drawings that their parents decided weren’t worth keeping. Both authors are collecting what is discarded, essentially lost, forgotten, or removed. Exhibited together are discarded children’s drawings and found objects, along with photographs or mind notes taken along the path they were found on. This joint part of the installation juxtaposes the two artists’ works, celebrating their common essence and exposing their methodological and origin differences. The architectural intervention also helps us navigate the space, which is otherwise divided by authorship and the clumsy art vs. design categorization, challenging the prevailing binary in the so-called higher arts. However, here, anonymity haunts the children’s drawing as much as the found objects, questioning ownership, aura, origin, belonging, and authorship, and offering two complementary archival methodologies. Viktoria describes her work as processual: walking, observing, documenting, harvesting moments, objects, and images on the trail, and replicating them on the loom. Her process is the work we are experiencing. The broad collection encompasses drawings, photos, objects, weavings, notes, and a diary, all of which, at its core, present the action of moving, pausing, observing, moving again. The pauses are felt in her weavings, where the weft stops the weaving process, and the warp continues, almost as a blank moment of time. The photos and drawings are direct eternalised visuals of those pauses, and the objects hold a proof-like aura with many question marks about their origin story. Her work presents a personal archive with many interconnected elements exploring the fragility of time and emotions, captured and let go. Paulina retraces steps and memories back to her childhood and feelings of home and belonging. On the journey back in time, as she tried to locate her inner child’s handwriting, she began collecting children’s discarded drawings, the ones parents and teachers don’t find artistic or sentimental value in. By doing so, she prescribes value exactly where it had previously failed to be found: scribbles, abstractions, colors fighting, depth missing. For her diploma work and this exhibition, she produced three large carpets using the tufting technique, inspired by the collected works, some of which are also on display. She introduces us to ceramic tiles, which visitors are invited to rearrange to create new, evolving images, taken along the journey of ephemerality. This threaded exhibition serves as both a playground of memories and an archive of processes, reminding us of passages of time and space; additionally, it marks the rite of passage of two textile art students, leaving behind their student days and entering the unknown. The first day after graduation, which this exhibition celebrates, is also the first day of shedding the student identity, and proposes different identity questions, will have the authors become artists, designers, unemployed citizens, or something different, yet to be experienced, and may be ever evolving without the pressure to settle, but rather to pause.