City of Women - International Festival of Contemporary Arts

“[A]rchives, even though presumed to stand against loss, are themselves born out of it. By emerging from loss, they somehow also represent it. As if what is not there lent the archive its power to show and speak.” –Giulia Palladini in Lexicon for an Affective Archive (ed. with Marco Pustianaz)ARCHIVING. REMINDING. PERSISTING.The 31st International Festival of Contemporary Arts – City of Women will focus on over 30 years of the organisation’s and festival’s history, while reflecting on strategies of future-oriented archiving.

This year’s festival will take place from October 3 to 18, 2025, preceded by a pre-festival series of events on the theme of Parenthood, happening September 19–23.City of Women is one of the oldest organisations and festivals dedicated to continuously developing and presenting artistic practices by women, feminist art, and art created by women and gender-nonconforming individuals. In addition to addressing gender, it also engages with intersecting areas such as class, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc., which are inseparable from gender. City of Women is a pioneering organisation of its kind in Slovenia and beyond. The archive of the organisation and festival is a rich source of artists, artistic practices, and curatorial strategies.In an era of simultaneous gender mainstreaming and social retraditionalisation, City of Women remains a space whose longstanding efforts to create working conditions for women and gender-nonconforming individuals have had a meaningful impact on the transformation of the cultural sector—one that is today more diverse and inclusive. Its continued value lies in its history, which holds the knowledge and experience necessary to imagine feminist futures even in potentially adverse social conditions.