BIEN Textile Art Biennial 2027

BIEN 2027: Traces of Grace

Textile Art Biennial BIEN 2027 is organised in Kranj, Škofja Loka, Tržič and Jesenice (Slovenia). It is a heritage-based and sustainability-driven event with three programme pillars: art, impact and research. 2027 edition will embrace "Traces of Grace". 

Traces of Grace

We live in a time that translates nearly everything into the language of exchange. Value is measured through performance. Time becomes a resource. Attention becomes a commodity. Relationships become transactions. People become data, users, voters, labour forces, or target groups. Systems and bureaucracies find it increasingly difficult to see a person and increasingly easy to see a category. History is full of such moments: moments when human beings cease to be human beings and become numbers, cases, problems, surpluses, or statistics. This is why the question of grace feels political today. Not because it offers simple solutions, but because it redirects our attention towards what systems often overlook: the individual, the relationship, and our shared humanity. 

At the same time, the world is once again being rapidly divided. Into them and us. Into those who belong and those who do not. Into the useful and the useless. Into lives that count and lives that remain invisible. These divisions are not new. History is full of attempts to reduce the complexity of human experience to simple oppositions, yet only their forms change. Once they were borders between nations, religions, or classes; today they are reinforced by algorithms, media systems, political campaigns, and economies of attention. Divide et impera never disappeared as a method. It merely changed its technology. Wars, migrations, climate catastrophes, growing inequalities, and social conflicts are often presented as disconnected problems. Yet they have histories, causes, structures, and beneficiaries. In a time that constantly urges us to identify a new enemy, take sides, and simplify reality, the ability to recognise ourselves in another person becomes an almost revolutionary act.