Kristina Benjocki

In Study of Focus, Kristina Benjocki reimagines the contested history of former Yugoslavia by weaving tapestries inspired by details from history textbooks. Her work treats both textiles and textbooks as interconnected mediums, capable of narrating, interpreting, and even appropriating historical events in unique ways.  

The traditions of tapestry weaving and history writing in Yugoslavia become parallel processes in her analysis, both serving as methods that blur the boundaries between material and memory. Benjocki’s tapestries draw from Yugoslav history textbooks published between 1950 and 2000, focusing on sections that explore how World War II was interpreted. The woven pieces replicate close-ups of textbook pages, including their marks of use: pen strokes, stains, stray hairs, and coffee spills. By highlighting these traces of human interaction, Benjocki suggests that the writing of history is not an abstract act but also a material process—subject to wear, reinterpretation, and erasure. Her zoomed-in perspective foregrounds the peripheries of historical narratives; frayed edges of stories that fall outside official historiography. Through this lens, Benjocki challenges institutionalized archives, showing that history can live in unexpected, parcellary spaces: in the fibers of a tapestry, the margins of a textbook, or the stains left behind by an unintentional gesture.