22 – 29 September 2025
16th International Festival of Visual Arts – Arteria
Art from a Suitcase
We present contemporary practices of artists living in or originating from countries of the Global South, whose works can be packed into the dimensions of a suitcase. The artists come from or have roots in Ethiopia, Ghana, Turkey, and Guatemala, and share a focus on working with or on textiles, using techniques such as collage, stitching, assemblage or the creative use of discarded materials. As a result, their works are both distinctly urban and deeply traditional, as the artists engage with themes related to the cultures they still inhabit or have emigrated from. Upon arriving in Novigrad, the artists unpack their suitcases and, in interaction with the public, work on art installations in and around the Museum Lapidarium.
Exhibiting: Kirubel Melke (Ethiopia), Dariwos Hailemichael (Ethiopia), Mewded Dagnachew (Ethiopia), Tewodros Bekele (Ethiopia), Birhanu Manaye (Ethiopia), Abel Beyene Disasa (Ethiopia), Mahilet Afework (Ethiopia), Dawit Tamrat (Ethiopia), Zelalem Merga (Ethiopia), Michael Tsegaye (Ethiopia), Dereje Shiferaw (Ethiopia), Cecilia Lamptey-Botchway (Ghana/USA). And the artists who will be present in Novigrad: Engdaget Legesse Amede (Ethiopia/Germany), Henok Getachew. (Ethiopia/Germany), Frederick Bamfo (Ghana), Patrick Tagoe-Turkson (Ghana), Quique Lee (Guatemala), Hale Ekinci (Turkey/USA), Emmanuel Boateng (Ghana/GB), Klaus Mertens (Germany).
Curated by Goran Tomčić and Jerica Ziherl
© G. T., J. Z.
During the Festival, the City Library Novigrad-Cittanova is hosting the African Literature Week, an exhibition of books on the theme of Africa.
Monday, 22 September – Friday, 26 September
10.00 – 16.00 Museum Lapidarium, Museum’s Park & Piazza Grande
opening of suitcases, community activation, participatory installation by:
Engdaget Legesse Amede
Spare a Minute to Sign
The artist focuses on his works from the “Signature” series, which use the Amharic script to convey a sense of language and provide a tool for connection in our time. The artist asks participants to take the time to add their own signature to his new abstract work on canvas, which will be the first performance of this project and will be added to the exhibited works made in Berlin.
©Engdaget Legesse Amede
Quique Lee
P.S.
What Stories Unfold after the Text?
A textile and sound installation of an exchange of letters between older adults from Guatemala and Croatia developed between July and September 2025. With the support of the Neighbour’s’ Association of Villas de Miraflores, the Day Care Centre for Older Adults of the Municipality of Guatemala City, and Novigrad Residential Care Home (Dom za starije osobe Novigrad/Casa per anziani Cittanova).
Assistants: Leo Subanović, Lea Legac
©Quique Lee
Henok Getachew
Weather Report
This installation takes the form of a tornado, built entirely from discarded plastic collected from households, streets, and polluted waters. At its core, a motorized column rotates when activated by visitors, transforming waste into a powerful kinetics form. The tornado, both awe-inspiring and catastrophic, symbolizes the fragile balance of nature and the chaos caused by human interference. By integrating plastic into this elemental force, the work reflects how humanity creates its own invasion—destabilizing ecosystems and ourselves.
Visually captivating yet unsettling, the swirling motion embodies fear, disorder, and endlessness. The piece aims to leave the audience with a lasting reminder of plastic’s invasive presence and the destructive impact of human activity on our environment.
©Henok Getachew
Patrick Tagoe Turkson
Drifted Journeys: Traces across Shores
The artist will create artworks from waste flip-flops collected on Ghanaian beaches and transport them in his suitcase for exhibition in Novigrad. Alongside this, with the local community, he will develop an outdoor installation using discarded flip-flops and drift materials gathered from the beaches of Novigrad as well as from the island of Hvar, which the curator previously sent on by post.
©Patrick Tagoe – Turkson
Frederick Bamfo
Bouquet Picnic
The project explores the subtle intersection between nature, gathering, and celebration. It envisions picnic not as an outdoor meal but as games, weaving together human presence, architectural intervention, floral abundance, and sensory engagement. Just as a bouquet garners diverse blossoms into a harmonious unit, picnic garners people, structures, colours, sounds, and experiences into convivial conversations that act as a refuge from the current turbulent world.
© Art Omi ©Nubuke Foundation
Monday, 22 September, Museum Lapidarium
19.00 Coffee Ceremony, Bora Nera Coffee Roasters, Vodnjan
the only Istrian member of the Specialty Coffee Association.
Ethiopia is known as the birthplace of coffee, and the coffee ceremony is a central part of Ethiopian culture. This is also true in other countries of Africa and Latin America. Together with “Bora Nera”, explore the true taste of coffee and learn more about it. Enjoy a new experience in coffee consumption, a complex and wonderful journey from seed to cup (and from Novigrad to Africa).
© J. Z.
Tuesday, 23 September
12.00 – 14.00 Studio visit
Atelier Đanino Božić, Novigrad
a studio visit for all participants to meet a renowned Croatian artist living and working in Novigrad.
18.00 Novigrad-Cittanova City Library
African Literature Week, reading and discussion led by the Library Book Club.
19.00 Rigo Gallery, exhibition opening
Quique Lee
Portrait
An exhibition by a Guatemalan artist whose works combine embroidery, textile art, and interdisciplinary projects, approaching social and cultural issues from a critical and collaborative perspective. This installation and video of a collective performance present the outcomes of workshops held since 2023 in various locations across Guatemala, the United States, Mexico, and Costa Rica. He lives and works in Guatemala City, Central America.
Men don’t embroider, just as they don’t cry or show weakness. Men don’t open up, don’t talk about their issues, don’t share their feelings. Although patriarchal society draws a clear line between the feminine and the masculine, for Quique Lee, these roles are anything but fixed.
©Carolina Porras Monroy
Wednesday, 24 September
9.00 – 12.00, Studio visit, Golo Brdo
a visit to the iconic Istrian art centre Golo Brdo in Rovinjsko Selo. An introduction to the visual, thematic, and conceptual practice of Petar and Tomislav Brajnović, prominent figures of the Croatian contemporary art scene. On the return journey, a stop at Dušan Džamonja Sculpture Park in Vrsar.
18.30, Museum Lapidarium, Artist talk / Lecture
Emmanuel Boateng
Threads of Disruption: Reimagining Asante Kente design in Contemporary Art
This talk explores how Asante Kente, traditional Ghanaian design weaving through its repetition of colours, motifs, and labour can be reimagined as a contemporary artistic process of disruption and knowledge gathering. Drawing from studio experiments, participatory workshops, and exhibitions, the artist reflects on how his process of exploring Kente design in contemporary artistic locations unsettles Eurocentric art histories while foregrounding African cultural memory and material epistemologies.
©Emmanuel Boateng
19.30, Museum’s park, Concert
GIIPUJA
The performance features: Damjan Grbac (double bass), Marko First (violin, sopela), Aldo Foško (bass clarinet), Tonči Grabušić (drums). The quartet’s name stands for the acronym for Music of Istria and the Coast in Jazz Arrangements. As part of the ‘100 Wells, Come on!’ tour, GIIPUJA is performing in the museum park at the Pozzo Novo Well from the early 16th century. Organized by the Center for Manifestations and Culture Novigrad-Cittanova.
©GIIPUJA ©J. Z.
Thursday, 25 September
18.00, Museum Lapidarium, atrium
Performance/fashion show
©Klaus Mertens ©Yero Adugna Eticha
Klaus Mertens
Skin of Consumption (life in plastic bags)
While travelling all over Ethiopia, I started collecting plastic bags. Their colours, logos, and “images” were very attractive and interesting to me. Over time, these bags became my chosen materials, and I started making garments out of them. This is how my artistic oeuvre”doing fashion” was born. Today, these bags are ubiquitous, a symbol of global consumerism. I love them, even though they represent a huge ecological burden, especially for the oceans. I do not recycle these materials; I reinterpret them and add new value to them.
Klaus Mertens, German architect, designer, artist, former lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.
Friday, 26 September
9.00 – 14.00, Studio visit
Atelier Bojan Šumonja, Pula
a visit to one of the most prominent contemporary Croatian painters. A tour of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Istria, the Novo Gallery, and the amphitheatre in Pula (Arena). On the return journey, a stop at Apoteka – Space for Contemporary Art in Vodnjan.
18.30, Museum Lapidarium, Museum’s park, Artist talk / Lecture
Hale Ekinci
From Stone to Thread: Crafting Memory, Monument, and History through Women’s Work
This talk reflects on the ways memory can be preserved, reconstructed, and reimagined “softly”; translating in fluencies from the enduring gravestones of Novigrad’s Lapidarium to the ephemeral traditions of women’s textile work. Drawing from my lived experience as a Middle-Eastern immigrant woman becoming a “naturalized” American, I collage together folkloric symbols and textile codes such as oya and kilim motifs with autobiographical relics from the East and the West using fabric, print, thread, and paint. By translating stone into thread, permanence into fragility, and people into ornament, I explore how non-dominant, intimate narratives can reshape historic telling. The Lapidarium becomes not only a site of cultural preservation but also a catalyst for rethinking how we collectively remember.
Hale Ekinci is Professor of Art & Design (chair), North Central College, Naperville, Illinois, USA
©Kevin Schmalandt
Saturday, 27 September
9.00 – 12.00, 15.00 – 18.00, Museum Lapidarium, Museum’s park & Piazza Grande
final work on installations and preparation for the festival finissage.
19.00, Museum Lapidarium, Museum’s park, Concert
Nhau: Look What I Found in the Forest
The concert programme includes a selection of songs from a new album. In addition to Nuša Hauser, the singer-songwriter, the performance features: Branko Crnogorčić, the album’s producer and sound design collaborator, Miron Hauser, trombonist and artistic director of the Croatian Radiotelevision Jazz Orchestra, and Mattia Mioli, percussionist.
©Đani Celija, 2025.
Sunday, 28 September
17.00, artist talk and guided tour (in English)
Quique Lee
P.S.
What Stories Unfold after the Text?
The artist presents an installation started in Guatemala and completed during the festival in collaboration with volunteers from the Novigrad Residential Care Home.
18.00, group exhibition opening,
Art from a Suitcase
Kirubel Melke, Dariwos Hailemichael, Mewded Dagnachew, Tewodros Bekele, Birhanu Manaye, Abel Beyene Disasa, Mahilet Afework, Dawit Tamrat, Zelalem Merga, Henok Getachev, Michael Tsegaye, Dereje Shiferaw, Engdaget Legesse Amede, Frederick Bamfo, Cecilia Lamptey-Botchway, Patrick Tagoe-Turkson, Quique Lee, Hale Ekinci, Emmanuel Boateng, Klaus Mertens.
The exhibition will remain open to visitors until 22 November 2025, during the opening hours of the Museum Lapidarium.
Monday, 29 September
9.00 – 16.00, Studio visit, Labin
Park skulptura Dobrova
a guided tour by the non-profit organization Mediterranean Sculpture Symposium.
Sign up and take part with the artists in the creation of artworks, a fashion show, and an exploration of Global South art.
Dereje Shiferaw, Artist book, 2025, detail
Muzej-Museo Lapidarium, Velika ulica 8a, Novigrad-Cittanova, Croatia.
Designed by Oleg Šuran. Associates: Anika Mijanović Simić, Ivan Blašković, Đanino Božić, Lea Legac, Leo Subanović, Sabina Oroshi, Tatjana Ziherl. Translated and Copyedited by Mark J. Davies.
The programme is made possible with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, Istria County – Administrative Department for Culture and Homeland, the City of Novigrad-Cittanova, the Tourist Board of the City of Novigrad-Cittanova, North Central College, Naperville, IL, USA.
