Alma M. Karlin, writer and one of greatest travelers of all time, returned home in 1927 after eight years of continuous travel around the world. In memory of the 90th anniversary of her return, Cankarjev dom, in cooperation with Celje Regional Museum, presented a retrospective exhibition featuring her life and work.
The exhibition, employing various tools of scenography, invites visitors to embark on a journey together with Alma, beginning in the re-contextualized port of the Genoa. The central exhibition narrative is built from extracts of the most interesting points of her trip, linked around a centrally placed globe presenting the path she took in a more detailed way and creating a sense of its scale. Among a large number of museum collectables, woodblock prints from Almas’ collection are being presented to the public for the very first time – originating from Japan they are placed on a white gallery wall inside a translucent pavilion.
The museum collectables are being complemented with around 500 postcards collected by Alma. Presented and placed on a wall in such a way that they form Alma’s portrait, they can also be individually viewed on a touchscreen, where each of them can be seen from the backside as well. Alma’s story is further presented through an interactive children’s section and a larger screen, which grants visitors access to additional content by individual chapters, already presented throughout the space. The visiting route concludes with a sculpture of a tree, cut down right next to Almas’ grave, with emphasized cuts symbolically reminding us of its past.