In a collaborative project Birthday Maypoles, created by knitwear designer Jona Bednjanec (1991) and photographer Lucija Rosc (1995), the artists combine their different types of artistic techniques and transform photographs into knitwear. The series is showing motifs from photographs of birthday maypoles, that Lucija Rosc has been collecting ever since 2015. They are traditional objects of birthday celebrations, specific to the Slovenian space. In the countryside on someone’s birthday anniversary, their friends and family usually put up a tall spruce tree, garnished with a road sign and funny writings. Lately very different types of mlaji are appearing, from ornate vehicles to banners, large sculptures, puppets, etc. The collection of photographs is a topographic-anthropologic exploration of a tradition in a local space. Through exhibitions, books and social media, the photographer is introducing this phenomenon to a large crowd of people. With their contributions and her own documenting, she creates an extensive archive which is updated daily on the Instagram account @rdmlaiji. Jona Bednjanec designs distinctively colourful products with versatile patterns and bindings by herself. She produces them with a knitting machine that, for this project, she managed to re-program in a way that it knits photographs. The artist stresses the importance of recycling in a world of design and textile industry by using the remnants of woollen yarns from local knitwear productions. Furthermore, the usage of local Slovenian materials corresponds with the idea of traditional folk custom. A certain meticulousness and vigilance can be felt in how the artists are tackling the creation process of each of their products. The result is unique knitwear that is not only one of a kind in terms of production, but in the sense of conceptual design as well.
