As part of the sixth edition of the WHW Academy, we continue our Evenings with the WHW Academy program with a lecture by artist Jelisaveta Rapaić, a WHW Academy alumna.

Evenings with WHW Akademija: Jelisaveta Rapaić, artist talk
Friday, 11th April 2025, 19h, Draškovićeva 31, Zagreb

Through textile installations, spatial interventions, and performative experiences, she examines the characteristics of ‘high-pressure contemporary culture anxieties’, such as wellness, wage making, mental health, and womanhood. In this process, she is interested in the mechanisms by which we individually and collectively cope with current pressing issues, and the ways in which different systems of care are established and function or fail. She often wonders if the practice of creating art in the textile medium can ever be fully emancipated and considered a feminist and liberating practice, or if its current interpretation inherently builds upon and depends on traditional gender roles and labor division we interpret it through.

 
WeAreOpen, pop-up hair salon
Saturday, 12th of April 2025, 10-15h, Youth Center Ribnjak, Park Ribnjak 1, Zagreb

Pop-up hair salon offering hair cutting therapy sessions in exchange for other goods and services, 2020-ongoing

Jelisaveta Rapaić asked herself selfishly, “If the world were to end tomorrow, what would be my unfulfilled wish?”— to be a hairdresser. Out of a dormitory room, on March 15, 2020, as all hair salons were forced to close their doors, WeAreOpen, a pop-up hair salon offering hair-cutting therapy sessions in exchange for goods and services, was born. Secretly marketed through Instagram, the project made both the artist and her space available to others, engaging in a perverse game of learning a skill, trusting, bravery, therapy, value, and touch—at a time when touch was scarce. 
To this day, the project remains ongoing – in a sense. While Jelisaveta no longer offers her personal space, the salon has continued to appear in exhibition settings,allowing the artist to explore the possibility of constructing safe spaces, and to question the existence of false care systems that society claims to have in place. (The Others, Art fair, Torino, IT, 2024, Salon Jelisaveta; True Hell Comes from Within, PAF Gallery in Olomouc, CZ, 2023, KONTAMINÁCIE, Telocvičňa Nová Cvernovka, Bratislava, 2022 Dům kultury a únavy, HaDivadlo, Brno, CZ, 2021, Group Therapy, SNG – Schaubmarov Mlyn, Pezinok, SK 2021).

Jelisaveta Rapaić is an artist, independent curator, researcher, and educator from Belgrade (Serbia), based in Bratislava (Slovakia). She holds a Bachelor’s degree in textile design from the Faculty of Applied Arts, Belgrade (2019), and a Master’s degree in Intermedia Studies from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (2021), where she is currently a PhD candidate in Art Theory researching feminist interpretations in contemporary textile and fiber art. Until 2024, she worked as a public program curator and PR specialist for Kunsthalle Bratislava, and since 2020, she’s been running a pop-up hair salon where she offers hair cutting therapy sessions in exchange for other goods and services.

WeAreOpen, a pop-up hair salon, is part of the Practices of Care program funded through the special public call Culture and Art in the Community of the City of Zagreb, implemented by WHW.

WHW Akademija is funded by the Kontakt Art Collection, ERSTE Foundation, Foundation for Arts Initiatives, and Trust for Mutual Understanding.

Program is supported by:
City Office for Culture and Civil Society
Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia
Kultura Nova Foundation