Saba Skaberne – To the Core

Saba Skaberne graduated in 1986 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, specializing in sculpture under Professor Slavko Tihec. Since 1987, she has been working as a freelance artist. She is a member of ZDSLU (Association of Slovene Fine Arts Societies), DLUL (Association of Fine Artists of Ljubljana), and since 2012 also of DOS (Section for Unique Design). Her artistic practice spans small-scale sculpture, portraiture, ambient and site-specific installations, as well as animation. For the past 15 years, she has been intensely focused on working with felt (soft sculpture). Between 2008 and 2012, she taught sculpture at the Famul Stuart School of Applied Arts in Ljubljana. She has held more than 41 solo exhibitions and participated in over 90 group exhibitions and projects. Her work has earned her six awards. She lives and works in Ljubljana.

In the felted wool objects of sculptor Saba Skaberne, one can sense a connection to something ancient — as if they belong neither to this time nor to this place. From her early sculptures in traditional sculptural materials, she transitioned to the technique of felting, a medium that offers her the ideal means to bring her ideas to life. These objects are bodies — their origin and nature are unknown, yet they appear refined and evocative, though at their core, they remain mystical, almost fictional.

Saba does not construct her objects using conventional, pre-determined forms; instead, each carries within it a sense of enigma. This mystery lies hidden like a closed garden in the many layers the artist creates through a meditative, time-consuming felting process — forming bodies beneath bodies, layered forms that flow from one to another under the sculptor’s hands. A body turns and grows beneath another, beneath a third and a fourth — invisible until the object is completed, at which point the next phase of the sculptor’s process begins.

With a blade, she intervenes in the body and all its accumulated layers; she cuts and opens it to its core. This incision is an entry into the self — into thoughts and emotions that have emerged and faded throughout the creative process. These are hidden within the material that remained inside, only to be reopened through the final cut — like wounds, like pains healed by the very act of making each individual object.