Forest Foraging in the Past and Today
Guided tour of Polonca Lovšin’s exhibition with Vlasta Mlakar
Wednesday, January 17, 2024, 17:00
Gallery of the Slovenian Forestry Institute, Večna pot 2, Ljubljana
Photographs by Damjana Uršič.
The event will be held in Slovenian.
In the context of Polonca Lovšin’s exhibition The Forest in Women’s Hands and Mushrooms at the End of the World, we invite you to a special guided tour of the exhibition, which will include a presentation about forest foraging by Vlasta Mlakar.
From prehistoric times to today, the forest, as an exceptional natural ecosystem, has been an essential spiritual, social, and economic space offering human beings many earthly goods, the oldest of these being connected to folk beliefs and mythological conceptions of the forest. The ethnologist Vlasta Mlakar will present the knowledge, practices, and skills of our ancestors related to forest foraging, the oldest foraging economy which took place primarily in the domain of women in the ever-repeating circle of life from spring to winter, birth to death.
VLASTA MLAKAR. As a scholar of geography and ethnology, Vlasta Mlakar has been researching traditional knowledge about the plant world in Slovenian lands for over two decades. Her research is presented in the book Rastlina je sveta, od korenin do cveta (2015, reprint 2021), the first systematic work in the field of ethnobotany in Slovenia. In 2020, a shortened version of the book was published in English translation: Sacred Plants in Folk Medicine and Rituals: Ethnobotany of Slovenia. For more about the author see: www.etnobotanika.si
The exhibition The Forest in Women’s Hands and Mushrooms at the End of the World is open on all weekdays from 9:00 to 14:00 until January 31, 2024.
Exhibition partners: Igor Zabel Association, Slovenian Forestry Institute, and KUD Obrat
The exhibition and accompanying programme are part of the European collaborative project Forest Encounters.
Co-funded by the European Union, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, and Ministry of Public Administration of the Republic of Slovenia.