Women's voices in fashion - A journey through time

In this 60-minute creative workshop, students explored the lives and identities of women across different historical periods - from ancient Athens and Alexandria to Renaissance Venice - following the virtual reality experience aboard the Musée-bateau. Using fashion and storytelling as tools, participants illustrated female characters inspired by historical clothing and wrote short diary entries from their point of view.

Through this process, they reflected on women's daily lives, emotions and social roles in the past, making connections with the way women are portrayed in contemporary media and culture.

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Jadranka Lacković, who holds a Master's degree in Applied Arts, is a Croatian visual artist and muralist based in Rijeka. Her artistic practice links painting, urban art and socially committed projects, with a particular focus on community involvement, education and environmental awareness.

Born in Rijeka in 1986, Jadranka began her artistic career at LIADO (Visual Research Studio for High Potential Primary School Children), before continuing her secondary education at the School of Applied Arts and Design in Rijeka, where she specialized in industrial design. In 2011, she graduated from the Academy of Applied Arts in Rijeka with a diploma in applied painting.

She interned at the Municipal Puppet Theatre in Rijeka, where she took part in theater productions and short films, deepening her interest in collaborative, interdisciplinary work.

In 2015, she co-founded the creative workshop ArtMašina with colleagues Dunja Kodrnja and Marija Kajapi. ArtMašina promotes visual culture and DIY skills through art education, with long-term collaborations including the International School of Zug and Luzern (ISZL), Tobogan Festival, Children's House Rijeka, Stribor Youth Library and Kastav Cultural Summer.

For the past five years, Jadranka has been an active contributor to the Šibenik International Children's Festival, where she leads art workshops combining imagination, critical thinking and environmental themes. Her educational work relies heavily on the creative engagement of children and young people, developing empathy and awareness through hands-on activities.

Recent workshops at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMSU) in Rijeka include:

"Morska kuharica / Sea Cookbook" - A creative exploration of marine pollution. Children imagined sea creatures as chefs, invented recipes from garbage found in the ocean and wrote biographies of these underwater characters. The results were compiled in a unique hand-crafted publication.

"Ispod površine / Beneath the Surface" - A collaborative painting workshop in which children (aged 7-12) created large wooden panels, now on display in front of the Children's House in Rijeka. The project focused on collective creativity, spatial awareness and visual storytelling.

Since 2010, she has been creating street art and illustrations under the name ojoMAGico, with murals in Rijeka, Belgrade, Koprivnica, Sisak, Opuzen and Brussels. She represented the Balkans at the 15th Balkan Trafik festival in Belgium in 2021. Her socially committed frescoes include works for the SOS Center for Non-Violence and Human Rights, the Koprivnica Red Cross, the Kantrida Children's Hospital and several educational establishments.

She took part in Melinda Šefčić's "The Freedom to Create" project, painting inside the Rijeka investigative prison and the family visiting room at Pula prison - testifying to her ongoing interest in marginalized voices and transformative spaces.

In 2022, she launched a long-term research project, "Studija zaborava / The Study of Forgetting", based on interviews with workers and retirees from the 3. Maj shipyard in Rijeka, focusing on memory, identity and the heritage of work.

She is a member of the Croatian Association of Visual Artists (HDLU) and its Rijeka branch (HDLUR).

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