Threads of Wellbeing 2025 (EN)

CALL

Share your experience, wish, thought, (diary) entry, protest slogan, or insight about your relationship with wellbeing — in the broadest sense of the word. Already submitted:

I MISS THE VIEW

LETTING GO ALSO BRINGS NEW THINGS

APPARENTLY YOU CAN RUN ON DENIAL AND ADRENALINE FOR A WHILE

TO BE SEEN NOT TO BE BELIEVED

THE OUTSIDE WORLD SEES MY WIFE AS ALWAYSBUT AT HOME SHE’S GONE

BENEATH MY SKIN LIVE HUNDREDS OF STORIES

I STILL CARRY YOU

TEARJERKER IN DA HOUSE

(DES)PAIRRECLAIMING

POTPOURRI OF EMOTIONS

INVISIBLE INHERITANCETHE

FINAL GIFT MY LITTLE TREASURE

how to submit

➔ Online: send to info@saarswinters.be
➔ In person: on June 8 and June 14, 2025 (1:00 PM – 3:00 PM), in the courtyard of the Dr. Guislain Museum
➔ Psychojazz: July 4, 5, and 6 (1:00 PM – 3:00 PM) – zie Psychojazz 2025
➔ Anonymously: via the comment box at the bottom of this page
➔ Anonymously by post: Dr. Guislain Museum
Attn. Saar Swinters / Threads of Wellbeing
Jozef Guislainstraat 43B, 9000 Ghent, Belgium
➔ Anonymously via dropbox: located in the courtyard of the Dr. Guislain Museum, Gent, Belgium

INSTALLATION

Threads of Wellbeing is a participatory writing and textile research project in which I explore my personal relationship with illness and pain, in dialogue with broader societal questions and responses around wellbeing. The project offers a platform for reflection, collective healing, and critical inquiry into the power structures that shape our understanding of wellbeing.

Submissions

The words and sentences submitted will be transformed into letterprints that together form a textual landscape in public space. The space evolves through the ongoing addition of your contributions. It explores both the conceptual and visual dimensions of wellbeing — and the boundary between inner and outer world, between body and system.

The installation unfolds between May and July 2025 in the courtyard of the Dr. Guislain Museum, Gent, Belgium

© Stad Gent

WHY

This research starts from the idea that dealing with illness and pain is often an internal and lonely process — silenced out of fear of not being accepted in a society where health is the norm. In this space, the things that often remain unspoken elsewhere can be shared. Moreover, wellbeing encompasses more than just physical health; it also touches on social and economic dimensions.

What Led Me Here

In 2024, I was diagnosed with Long Covid (Post-Covid), a chronic multisystem illness that changed my daily life and future outlook. The search for recovery turned out to be largely an individual, invisible, and often misunderstood process — and from that experience, this idea emerged.
Even before this period, my work was situated at the intersection of textile art, social design, and transitional life moments. It explores how textiles can carry collective memory, identity, and intergenerational connection through a participatory practice. Together with diverse groups, layered stories arise — about family history, loss, care, and the tangible traces of life’s transitions.