Born in 1995, Trbovlje, Slovenia

Stitches

Lea Culetto (1995, Trbovlje) is a freelance intermedia artist engaging in feminist art. She obtained a post-graduate degree in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana, in 2019. Culetto makes textile and mixed-media objects and installations, challenging the deep-seated social representations of the female body, and the taboos, stereotypes and ideals associated with it, always drawing from her own experience. Culetto is the recipient of an recognition (2015) and an award (2018) for outstanding achievements, awarded by the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. Culetto was a resident of the MGLC Švicarija Cultural Center (2021-2023). Her solo shows were presented in various galleries in Slovenia, including Gallery Aksioma, Ravnikar Gallery Space, Gallery Božidar Jakac and Kresija Gallery. Culetto participated in numerous group exhibitions, including the Body and Territory (Kunsthaus Graz, 2023), Returning the Gaze (Cukrarna, 2022) and the 40 Years of Art(istic) Love by Vlasta Delimar (Škuc Gallery, 2020). She has collaborated with various international festivals, such as City of Women and Red Dawns. In addition to exhibitions, Culetto conducts different workshops and designs costumes for theatre plays. Messages knitted or woven into garments, hidden in them as patterns or sequences of knots, used to be one of the methods of covert communication and concealing messages in wartime. In Stitches, the artist decided to translate the contemporary binary number system into a traditional knitting pattern,whereby 0 became the knit stitch, and 1 became the purl stitch, or vice-versa; and used the code that is typical of computer and information science tointerlace coded messages into decorative pieces of knitwear. The sequence of stitches reveals the artist’s personal experience and intimate narratives about topics that still receive too little attention in public discourse, narratives about issues which, despite the society’s supposed openness, we areincapable of discussing openly and freely. The seemingly silent garments contain metaphors of our bodies being disciplined and of our uncritical conformation to behavioural norms of a patriarchal society.