Maravee Dress Festival | 

Civic Gallery, Piran |

30th of April 2021 – 27th of June 2021

(Free entrance, subject to the current restrictions and regulations related to the health emergency.)

The regenerating dress of Identity and Environment between Art, Fashion and Entertainment.

In collaboration with Maravee Cultural Association, Udine, Italy.

The vibrant flow of events of Maravee Dress Festival, which took place in some of the most prestigious and mesmerizing historical locations of Friuli Venezia Giulia, the towns of Grado, Gemona del Friuli and Colloredo di Monte Albano, ends in Slovenia, with an intriguing collective exhibition hosted by the Civic Gallery of Piran, where the final catalogue of the festival has been officially presented.

Maravee (miracle), is a festival designed and directed by Italian curator and art critic Sabrina Zannier, which intertwines since 2002 multifaceted forms of contemporary artistic expression, ranging from visual art to theatre, dance, music, fashion, design, and more. The main theme of the festival changes every year (Maravee Corpus, Maravee Therapy, Maravee Ludo, Maravee Object), sharing a common ground of issues and topics; it is located in different sites of Friuli Venezia Giulia and Slovenia, thanks to the continuous cooperation and patronage of Obalne Galerije Piran.

Maravee Dress Festival tackles the theme of the dress by discovering its symbolic, social and anthropological value in its folds, to reveal the hinge between inside and outside. The dress is not just a layer that surrounds the human body, but something that claims to possess it, shape it and transform it. By affecting identity – between body, mind and society – the dress hides it and reveals it, and the environment is addressed in an ecological sense, through the recycling and production of materials and ideas.

By leveraging the values of historical memory and territorial knowledge, in the dichotomy between local and global, the reappropriation of the genius loci stands out among the ingredients that help liven up the cultural and social dialogue, which continues to cross over its boundaries.

Within an articulated path, the exhibition creates interesting dialogues and connections between photography, fashion, performances, videos and installations. Jaz Bivam stages the concept of habitus in the continuous exchange of identity roles between body and dress. Entrusting the main role to one or the other, the artists enquire the quest of the mutant being between past and future, and the viewer is left with no assurances, starting from the title: is it the human identity that inhabits the dress, or the dress that shapes our identity presenting itself through its body?

Jaz Bivam (I live) is an interesting journey through the artworks of six Slovene artists – Vanja Bučan, Petra Doljak and Urša Skumavc, Elena Fajt, Simona Semenič and Nada Žgank – and the very youg Italian stylist Romina Dorigo.