By Lydia C. Cole
This text was originally written for and published by Stitched Voices’ blog. It was developed from an interview conducted with NeSpoon in April 2025, and all quotes are drawn from this interview, unless otherwise indicated.
Street Arts Festival Mostar
I started following the Street Arts Festival Mostar (SAFMo) in 2019 as part of a broader interest in art and peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The first edition of the festival was held in 2012, and it has run annually since then. SAFMo is driven by a curatorial vision to create space for artists to express themselves and present positive stories, and in doing participate in a process of repairing the city and society. In this way, festival organisers hope to transform the infrastructure of public space [1]. While the murals that adorn the streets of Mostar are the most obvious iteration of their vision, as the term ‘street art’ suggests, SAFMo incorporates a wide range of artistic practices in the festival programme including installations, performances, and paste-ups.
One artist who has contributed to the festival is NeSpoon, a Polish street artist who participated in the festival in 2021 and 2023. What drew my attention to NeSpoon’s work was the way that she threads together textile politics and street art. I was intrigued to find out more about her style, practice, and experience at the festival.
Art Practice: Lacework and social connection
Nespoon’s artistic practice began with ceramic work imprinted with lace patterns. As her style evolved, she became more interested in the aesthetics and possibility of lace. Lace need not have a ‘utilitarian function like a plate or mug to be visually pleasing’, rather, it was interesting in itself. She began to experiment with a range of ways to share lace designs which has included, ‘stencil, graffiti, temporary installations, video techniques, [and] murals’.
Through her work, NeSpoon became interested in the history of lace-making and began to reflect on its capacity to weave connection. As part of her developing practice, she was able to observe traditional lace-making circles where women gathered ‘to work on lace together and earn some additional income for their families’, noting the ‘sense of closeness, warmth, and calm’ that developed as the women ‘talked, sang, formed friendships, [and] gave each other advice and support’.
NeSpoon was also conscious of the ways that social, cultural and technological change had changed lace production. In the advent of ‘digitally programmable […] machines’, lace was no longer a luxury item ‘accessible only to social elites’ and became a ‘more affordable’ commodity, available to all. In this sense, lace became an increasingly mundane, yet no less intricate, part of the everyday fabric of society, weaving connection to memories of space and place.
For NeSpoon, lacework’s social connections are important to incorporate into the artistic process. As she reflects:
My working method […] is always the same: […] I visit local heritage museums and art galleries, and I also look for existing lace-making guilds or associations. I meet with active lace-makers who are still practicing. If I can’t find anything this way, I ask the organisers to speak to the older members of their families about lace. […] I go door to door around the neighbourhood where I’m painting, asking about lace—and I always find something.
Walls: Writing lacework
NeSpoon’s mural near Park Zrinjevac, Mostar, 2021. Photo: Lydia C. Cole
In 2021, NeSpoon was invited to participate in SAFMo. Her mural was inspired by a lace that ‘belonged to the grandmother of one of the [SAFMo] organisers’. In the course of production, it became apparent that the lace pattern was instantly recognisable to passersby ‘regardless of their ethnic or religious background’. Many recalled similar laces from their childhood homes and others commented that the design was ‘typical of the Yugoslav era’. These everyday interactions speak to the ways that street art can prompt social connection by evoking memories that resonate with people across the city.
The mural’s design is worth exploring further. In an article on lacework as a material metaphor for communication, Cabral Filho reflects that the ‘patterns in lace are built around empty spaces’ [2]. If you look closely at the above photograph, you may notice that the mural incorporates two kinds of empty spaces in its design. First, those necessary to evoke the lace-like pattern on the wall. Second, those that incorporate the wall’s pockmarks, outlined to evoke holes within the fabric itself. In doing so, the mural renders visible the material traces of war in the cityscape, a strategy that is reminiscent of the Sarajevo Red Roses.
Discussing this artistic choice, NeSpoon reflected:
I remember the war in Yugoslavia from my youth. We watched the news in disbelief—bombs falling on cities, reports of atrocities, mass rapes, genocide. [….] Especially the news from Mostar stayed with me […] When I arrived in that city, I still carried those memories with me. […] When I discovered the bullet holes on the wall I was assigned, I felt I simply couldn’t ignore that history—it was still present in me, and now I could physically touch it.
The mural then speaks to the memory of war and a ‘need to keep debates [about it] open’ [3]. Yet, the design was not without tension. In this context, NeSpoon added:
The organisers gave me full creative freedom, but I also heard that they would rather forget all of it and build a shared future, especially since tensions between the nations in the Balkans are again rising.
Ruins: Interweaving lacework
NeSpoon’s textile installation at the Old University Library, 2023. Photo: @nes.nespoon.
NeSpoon returned to Mostar in 2023 to craft a lacework installation. Discussing the idea for the installation, she reflected:
In a country still ethnically and religiously divided like Bosnia and Herzegovina, I tried to find something that unites the local residents. I thought that a thread of understanding might be possible on the level of a shared aesthetic code—such as lace patterns and the memories associated with them.
While several locations were explored for the installation, it was decided that the Old University Library – as a site that both evokes traumatic memory and newer practices of memory-making [4] – could serve its intentions to serve ‘as a metaphor for interpersonal connections and the search for common elements within a community’.
The metaphor was materialised through a process of interweaving donated laces in the walls of the ruin. In doing so, the installation became both ‘a symbol of life reborn after fire’ and an expression of NeSpoon’s ‘personal intention for peace in Bosnia and for all the people I met while working on this piece’.
Time: Fray and Friction
Photo: The old university library in 2024, Mostar. © Lydia C. Cole.
Traces of the installation were still visible when I visited Mostar in August 2024. Standing in front of the Old University Library, I was struck by the way that the white threads, which previously connected the lacework, were now loosely hung across the ceiling. Reflecting on this process of material decay, NeSpoon noted:
My installations are, by nature, temporary. The rubber bands are made from natural latex—a material that is sensitive to UV radiation. Over time, it begins to dry out and crack. It’s a very natural process; the installations begin to resemble aging spider webs. I like observing this process—it makes me reflect on the constant passing and rebirth of things.
NeSpoon’s process is one of both textiling and fray, whereby interweaving comes together with a necessary fraying, involving the ‘material wearing out of textiles, the undoing of threads, the pulling apart of fibers through strain and repeated use’ [5].
Writing and weaving conclusions
NeSpoon’s lacework reminds us of the ways that textiles are not simply ‘repositories’ of memory, but ‘contain and constitute important material and symbolical information about our interactions’ [6]. In Mostar, these processes of crafting invite conversations about the weaving, fraying, and friction of its social fabric, reminding us that peace-making is subject to ongoing negotiation.
Lydia C. Cole is an Assistant Professor in International Relations at the University of Sussex. Her research engages an aesthetic approach to peace and conflict studies, with a particular interest in the ways that arts – textiles, street art, sound art, and more – intervene in spaces of contested memory.
NeSpoon is an artist working at the intersection of urban art, painting, and traditional ceramics, with a particular interest in lacework. Her work has appeared in over one-hundred cities, in public space and in museums and galleries. Her work has been featured in diverse media including The Guardian, Huffington Post, Elle, and Graffitiart Magazine. To find out more about her art and work, visit her website or Instagram: @nes.nespoon.
References
[1] Cole, L. (2024) ‘Street Arts Festival Mostar: Curatorial Agency, Spatial Transformation and Artpeace Formation’, in Vogel, B., Kappler, S. and Richmond, O.P. (eds.) The art of peace formation: Arts-based social movements, opportunities and blockages. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 93-115.
[2] Cabral Filho, J. dos S. (2021) ‘From network to lacework: A new imaginary for global conversation’, Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, 19(1–2), pp. 71–77.
[3] Kappler, S. (2017) ‘Sarajevo’s ambivalent memoryscape: Spatial stories of peace and conflict’, Memory Studies, 10(2), p. 139.
[4] Souza, M. (2024) ‘Temporalities in spatial narratives about war ruins in Mostar’, Political Geography, 115, pp. 1-11.
[5] Bryan-Wilson, J. (2017) Fray: Art + textile politics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 4.
[6] Andrä, C. et al. (2023) ‘Textiling World Politics: Towards an extended epistemology, methodology, and ontology’, Global Studies Quarterly, 3(4), p. 10.