Barbara Prenka's 'What time is it between my fingers?' at A plus A, Venice

Kosovar artist Barbara Prenka (b. 1990, Gjakova) explores the link between time and weaving in her solo exhibition 'What time is it between my fingers?' at Galleria A plus A in Venice. The show spans both floors, highlighting her practice centered on embroidery and textiles. Prenka uses weaving as a temporal device to reconnect with her childhood bed and the Yugoslav Wars, from which she fled. Objects made by her mother—doilies, bedspreads, and linens—are installed as counterpoints to Prenka's contemporary works, which respond to a lost personal and collective past. The work 'Reunion with aunts and uncles' (2023) from the series 'Dita e re' transforms archival photographs into embroidered rugs by the artist's female relatives, reducing figures to chromatic fields and transcending individual identity toward public memory. Two works titled 'Dudi' (2025) feature long-pile embroidery that blurs into abstraction. The lower floor displays embroideries and watercolors from the series 'Rabbits habbits' (2016), while the upper floor presents pastel drawings from 'Remind me who I am' (2024), which suggest a bed through shifting colored lines. A highlight is 'The blindes of the dark is a touchable light' (2025), a silk embroidery mounted on a hand-woven wool rug by her mother, using red and black to evoke flora, sabbath, geometry, and vortex. The exhibition is informed by philosopher Karen Barad's concepts of 'temporal diffraction' and 'inter-actions.'