Hana Miletic: Dependencies

In “Dependencies”, the work of the Brussels-based Hana Miletic assumes the commanding place it deserves: that of a solo show at Wiels. Vulnerability and care, temporary reality and ancient truths, reach out to one another and coalesce wondrously.

There are a number of signs that say “Please do not touch” around Wiels, where the Brussels-based artist Hana Miletic is exhibiting her awe-inspiring “Dependencies”. The message is necessary because the first irresistible urge when you see these textile works is to touch them. To feel what manifests itself as a second, healing skin, as a wounded, sometimes flagrantly dismembered being, like a patchwork soul that asks to be cherished, or a discarded plaster that covered old wounds.

Hana Miletic’s work expresses an enticing proximity, blended with a very old soul. Like something unfathomable that preceded us, something mystical that resulted from the simple encounter of nimble fingers and a tangle of thread. As though the silence of these tactile textiles can access different truths than the ones our thoughts are able to reach. As though the path to these truths can only be travelled by a kind of heightened sensory awareness, the intuition of the body.

“Dependencies” was born from Hana Miletic’s need to devote herself to something tangible, a “labour of love”, with the open mind of an amateur. She enrolled in a weaving course at the academy in Anderlecht, an activity that took her back to her youth in Zagreb. After a while, she started using her photos of repaired car parts and architectural fragments – traces of wounds and healing – as patterns for her work on the loom. By unravelling and interweaving again, she started to better understand how certain relationships – between stronger and weaker, more flexible and tougher materials – operate in the fabric of textiles and society.

Raised voices

These dependencies are translated to her exhibition at Wiels. In addition to her own creations, “Dependencies” also shows the felt sheets that she made with a group of female newcomers at the open arts centre Globe Aroma. Along with the collective close reading and writing in the care of the reading group Knowledge Is a Does, this project has resulted in txt, Is Not Written Plain: an installation that consists of felt blankets and powerful poetry on an audio recording. It is in this context that the reparative role of the artist comes most explicitly to the fore. A position that makes it possible to give a voice to more vulnerable people and, through time and intimacy, to fit our alternating states of dependence into an ethical practice of care.

In February, the police raided Globe Aroma and seven people were arrested. At the same moment the ward threads of Hana Miletic’s loom broke. Fixing those threads and the support action One Alarm Many Voices were both attempts at healing, but in Hana Miletic’s eyes, they only seemed to make the divisions even more tangible. Somebody wondered whether it would not have been more appropriate not to try and fix things. All these voices make “Dependencies” an intense experience. An experience that washes and massages together imagination and deeper truths. With the intuition of the body, and caring fingertips. Deeply touching.