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For the second year in a row, Šibenik's youth association Š.UM is exhibiting a social-art installation entitled 'Women's work, good shade'.
More than was invested in making the installation 200 hours of work, kilometers of sewing thread, countless needles, several hundred meters of cotton tapes with which the installation is secured to withstand the often cruel weather conditions.
The project includes the participation of the wider social community. Namely, during 2023 and 2024 over 30 families from the area of the Šibenik-Knin County donated milieićes (tablets) and crocheted tablecloths from their mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers, which the volunteers of the Šibenik Youth Association Š.UM connected into functional shades for the public space.
At the same time, the donated works themselves did not change their form, but the work itself a collage of donated items in their original form in order to preserve the original ideas of numerous authors of works.
This gave priority to their diversity, the numerous forms in which they were made, and the emphasis was placed on their preservation and creative use.
They were made this year new two elements, and all elements are additionally secured with frames made of sailcloth and eyelets are installed on them to make them more evenly and easily placed.
Revival of the fountain square
The location for setting up the work this year is a small square in Stari pazar where there is a fountain.
A wooden pergola stands above the fountain, which allows for a better and more successful installation, and at the same time the fountain reminds of the exceptional past a living and valuable space of the city of Šibenik and allows passers-by to refresh themselves.
Despite the general perception that it is a 'dead' urban area, the association believes that it is worth highlighting its importance and potential. Today, it is a space that is occasionally used for fairs - and mostly more a place of passage - but a gathering place.
That's why they decided to give him a chance and by enabling him to stay in that space during the summer heat and exceptional sunlight, to offer an interesting visual game of shadows that is created when the sun touches the shades.
"We hope that our installation will invite people to sit down, rest and drink water under the shades that remind us of the enormous effort, work and creativity of women, but also of the need for shade in an environment of increasingly pronounced climate changes and increasing temperatures", say the Sibenik youth association Š.UM
The importance of manual work
The Women's Work, Good Shade project brought together a community of women who created or preserved women's handiwork.
Although we mostly associate it with the private sphere of the home, it is also known throughout history as a 'women's job' with a dual role expressed repressiveness, but also liberating activity and creativity.
By collecting this work, tying it up and repurposing it into a shade and placing it in the public sphere - the sphere of the public city space, it was added new value.
Bound women's works are a mirror of the diversity of women's lives, wealth of experience, beauty of creativity and are a strong memory of their family and work contribution.
The process of tying them together, or playing with that female heritage, is a process of discovering one's own past and thinking about a woman's future, she describes Maja Šintić.
"Nowadays, we talk more and more about the virtualization of human reality, which leads to the marginalization of the importance of human work. It can be assumed that this installation, in addition to creating shade, will also encourage thinking about the context of modern civilization, which assigns the hands mainly the function of typing, instead of some other, perhaps more important things", states the ethnologist Sandra Barešin.
Persistence and creativity at the end of the process result in an object that you can give as a gift, display or, in this case, combine into a shade cover, he adds, noting that this is a kind of praise to the hand and the importance of the role of the hand in the cultural history of humanity at the intersection of applied art, handwork and ecology.
Photo and source: Šibenik Youth Association, Š.UM
