What Time Is It Between My Fingers?

Barbara Prenka

Galleria A plus A

preview 29th March, 6pm

until 15th May 2025

A plus A Gallery, Venice

Embroidery, an ancient artistic technique since the myth of Arachne, attack(h)s.[i] It attack(h)s the thread of the present, the past and the future. As I move my fingers, it weaves actions and memories, and time flows between my fingers. I embroider and attack(h) the gods, philosophy, history, nature, I attack(h) physics. But in which direction flows the arrow of time? Newton's, Maxwell's, Einstein's, Heisenberg's and Schrödinger's equations have as their mathematical core the differential equation, and nothing prevents a differential equation from turning around. That a stone jumps back out of the water, after being thrown in, is not only possible in a tik-tok montage, but also in reality. ‘It is only an accidental inability, for which we are not yet able to make such a skilful construction, as to cause the necessary state of vibration at the edge of a lake or the edge of a bowl of water, to be able to do it for real’. So confirms David Hilbert, inventor of the mathematical space in which physics has been observing and calculating quantum energies for more than a hundred years now, performing probable and improbable acrobatics as saltimbanques.   

If physical reality does not prevent us from being able to reverse the arrow of time, nothing prevents Barbara Prenka’s solo exhibition at Galleria A plus A What time is it between my fingers, from evoking with her works those vibrations at the edges, those mathematical and physical limit conditions of the hands on embroidery, which, as suggested by Hilbert, could not only simply reverse the arrow of time, but in the case of art intertwine past, present and future in a new way — to make and unmake history and memories as if they were a bed. With the works on display, the artist creates an arrangement that connects past, present and future using handed down techniques, such as drawing and embroidery, but at the same time drawing inspiration in the shapes and colors from new social practices, from the possibility of a philosophy and a physics with new questions. The artist even seems to ask whether the present and the future do not have the power to change the past. 

The interweaving of the exhibition transports the visitor to the childhood bed of a collective and shared Europe. The geolocation of this bed is Yugoslavia. To be more precise, it is in Kosovo, and the temporal coordinates are those of the artist's birth in the year 1990. During the first war on European soil fought after the end of the Second World War, the doilies, embroidered bedspreads, drawings and parts of the trousseau made by the artist's mother, and which adorned the bed of that childhood, now adorn the walls of the A plus A Gallery and will dialogue with all the artist's works on display.  

The series of 24 drawings Remind me who I am is part of the constellation of works on display, which focuses on the methodical repetition of the same image of a bed, each with small variations in color and its structure, as if the drawn object followed a mathematical wave function. This process of repetition and change becomes an opportunity for awakening. Each drawing captures an intimate space, a symbol of vulnerability and refuge, but also an allegory of transition and lucidity. By combining works that the artist has created over the past 5 years with objects from a childhood in Kosovo, the exhibition also shows traces of what was forcibly abandoned in the escape from a country at war. The various forms of violence, including the forced erasure of places and stories, are displayed as if they were inscribed in the very structure of the world.  

Another project on display is Dite e re (Fingers and King). It is a photographic archive of a childhood spent in Kosovo that has been transformed into real embroidered carpets. In creating these embroideries, the artist involved the women of her family, her mother, grandmother and aunts, who still live in Kosovo. It is therefore the creation of a work of art, which has given the opportunity to actively share personal stories about the beginning of the war in Yugoslavia. The creation process involves manually inserting one thread at a time into a perforated fabric; an ancient traditional technique practiced by Kosovar women during the pre-marital period, when they created carpets called “Jani” as part of the dowry. These carpets and the other works on display, connect mental images, practices and memories, to a tradition passed down from generation to generation, thus transforming the entire exhibition into a journey through time. The works of art are compared with original objects from the 80s and 90s from the village in Kosovo where the artist grew up, and which have now been cited in the gallery as witnesses of history.   

What time is it between my fingers, suggests a responsible action of physics and its technical applications and the use of its resources. The theme of the responsibility of science and physics is also the theme of the philosophy of Karen Barad, American by birth, who inspired in some central points the solo exhibition of Barbara Prenka. The practice and social theory of Barad weighs on the memory of the launching of the two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just like the works of Barbara Prenka weigh on a childhood bed during the war in Yugoslavia. The “temporal diffraction”, as Barad calls it, is a coexistence of past, present and future, which influence each other. The idea of the exhibition What time is it between my fingers is to make the objects installed extend into each other just as the function of the quantum wave suggests. “Intra-action”, another concept of Barad, observes that phenomena or objects and human beings do not precede their interaction, do not have a real ontology pre-existing to their encounter, but rather objects like living beings emerge through particular “intra-actions”. Human beings, fauna and flora, as well as material entities or discursive entities do not exist separately and prior to their encounter, prior to their measuring and observing each other, and at best, prior to their learning from each other, but emerge only through their relationships and overlaps. As in embroidery, the threads take on meaning and form only in relation to the fabric and the design they create together.   

[i] “Attaccare” means in italian both: “to attack” and “to attach”.   

Barbara Prenka (1990, Gjakova, Kosovo) holds both a Bachelor’s an Master’s Degree in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, where she studied under Professor Carlo Di Raco.  Recent exhibitions include: Covers (curated by Zef Paci, Gallery of the Ministry of Culture of Kosovo in Prishtina, 2024), Dita e re (Documentation Centre of Kosovo in Prishtina, 2023), Re:nature (curated by Sylvain Brugier, Kunstquartier Bethanien in Berlin), The Event of a Thread - Global Narratives in Textiles (curated by Susanne Weiss, Inka Gressel and Hana Halilaj, National Gallery of Kosovo), What Do Landscapes Dream Of? (curated by Sarah Solderer and Mara Vöcking, Biennale Gherdëina 8 in Alto Adige), Shelter Lines, (curated by Edoardo Monti, Palazzo Monti, Brescia, 2021), Double Take, (curated by the School of Curatorial Studies of Venice, A plus A Gallery, Venice), Hôtel Dieu (A plus A Gallery, Venice, 2023), Where Touch Speaks Louder (curated by Eva Comuzzi, Marina Bastianello Gallery, Mestre-Venice, 2022), Venice Time Case (curated by Luca Massimo Barbero), For Some Bags Under the Eyes (curated by Romain Sarrot, Sans Titre, Paris, 2021), Pesi Massimi (curated by Fondazione Malutta and Augusto Maurandi, Spazio Punch, Venice)  She was the winner of the Euromobil Under 30 Award at ArteFiera Bologna (2015) and the Emerging Art Award at the Francesco Fabbri Prize for Contemporary Arts (2014) and the Combat Prize in the painting section in Livorno (2014).  Barbara Prenka lives and works between Venice, Bolzano and Berlin.