Curation/Text
SPLOT
Exhibition by Zosia Hołubowska2026
Exhibition text in form of a speculative tale created for "SPLOT" (Polish: braid, plait, entanglement), a solo exhibition by sound artist Zosia Hołubowska. Through crocheted structures and sculptures, the artist conjures a tactile and multisensory ecosystem of collaboration and mutual influence.
The exhibition braids issues that Hołubowska has been researching for a long time: symbiotic systems, embodied archives, and the healing potential of music. Rooted in queer experience and post-imperialist, intersectional feminism, Hołubowska explores connections between more-than-human intelligence and somatic memories, and transforms the archival into a plastic yet fragile space of connection.
Curated by Claudia Strate.
Support by Joanna, Gui, and Misia.
Funding: City of Vienna | Stadt Wien Kultur, Bildrecht
Weiglgasse 8/B1/R1, 1150 Vienna,
Exhibition 14.2. - 13.3.26
The Legend of SPLOT
{Listen!}
Beyond seven mountains, beyond seven forests, there’s a little house. It is dangling on fine thread, chittering in the quiet of winter. Where it was left behind, that is where we were and we will be. So are you. As you open your mouth in confusion, the house fluffs up, perks its wispy tufts and says: “That which you seek will reveal itself in time. The only thing you need to know for now, is this: Your fingers are hooks.”
While you bend your fingers in bewilderment, a whiff of damp air crawls into your nose. What a strange idea, that anything should remain after a fire. But look, there they are, scattered around the ground like brittle bones. At first a random pattern, they rise and grow, loop by loop. “A porcelain poem”, the soil hums from deep within. “Let your cells make sense of it.”
And with the song of the earth in your ear, you set off.
Through the lands of hypodermia* you pass, and they become your lifeline.
Through the lands of dermia you wander, and you are given the dictionary of touch.
When you reach the lands of epidermia, decades have passed. Nothing is, as it was.
When you move, everything shivers.
From yonder corner of your mind, a crustose city emerges. It sprouts and grows, cracks up and branches out. It crawls with possibilities. Sit down, draw a card and read, or chase some yarn tail. “There’s nothing at stake,” the furry poly-patrons say. “We play for love.”
While your heart grows ever fonder, we let our soft fibers reach out towards you. It is an invitation: Touch us, nuzzle us, wear our essence like perfume. Braid yourself into us. You speak in tongues, you learn to speak the language of SPLOT.
{Listen.}
Can you hear us calling? Those whispers, they were voices once. Our voices. Intrigued, you follow them into the darkness. A soft crooning takes hold of the hairs on your body. It echos into your chest and whirrs underneath your skin. It loops in the friction ridges of your fingertips. Each of them is a map to the world we are.
You find a place to lie down, and look up at the vast filament. You let yourself travel to the farthest corners of the universe, and three times around the sun. Do you remember the sun?
It was the sun calling for your hair to grow out and for your roots to dig even deeper, deeper into that which has been locked away, so close to your heart. When the ground tears open before you, you are not afraid anymore. You let yourself fall, and we close the gap. We let the pain wash over us. We let it go, like a wild river.
That which we seek, we are, we were, and we will be.
We are dangling on fine thread, and we hold on.
*These slightly modified terms refer to the different layers of skin. Hypodermis is the deepest layer, which connects the skin to the underlying muscles and bones. The fat in the hypodermis also regulates body temperature. The dermis or middle layer is where hair grows and sweat is produced, and that holds the nerve receptors that let you feel touch, and pain. The epidermis, the top level of skin, is the protective layer that is continually renewed.