In Croatia, the Voice of Silence connects collective knowledge, care and creativity

Arpy Zkoushian, Cyrille Cartier, Ivanka Pašalić, Ivona Kočica, Jasenka Kosir, Josipa Lulić, Madina Rezaie, Melike Bikec, Mensura Juranović, Safaa Salem, and Samaneh Reyhani

The writing of this text emerged from a shared process of collective introspection, shaped by 11 women’s generous contributions. What appears here reflects only those insights related to the process itself. Everything shared publicly has been done with the consent and input of all participants—a few drops in the sea of knowledge we discovered, alone and together, in Silence.

Getting situated

The candles are lit. The soothing scent of palo santo softens the heavy air of the small gallery-turned-sanctuary. Mugs and a thermos line the windowsill. Tables are draped in colorful tablecloths, evocative of distant travel, and scattered with colored pencils, pastels, pens.

Each woman has chosen her own notebook. For some, it’s the first time they’ve written their intimate thoughts—much less their secrets. They’d never considered their inner worlds as sources of knowledge to be embraced and explored.

A pile of papers awaits distribution: an introductory text and questions translated into Arabic, Armenian, Croatian, English, Farsi, French, and Turkish. A computer connects us with two participants in another city and country. Bags, coats, and phones rest in the next room, a symbolic gesture marking our separation from the outside world.

This ritual initiates our entry into a space of introspection. We are preparing to dive into our psyches, our personal universes. Only we decide where to go, how far, how deep. In this suspended time, we are at once together and alone.

A joint artistic practice

We, a group of 11 women, have known each other for several years as part of the Women to Women collective within Živi Atelje DK, a cooperative art community in Zagreb, Croatia. For nearly six months, we met weekly, in person or virtually, in a small atelier tucked away in one of Zagreb’s courtyards.

Each session began with relaxation and breathing exercises, followed by an hour of Silence—the capital s signifying silence as deliberate listening and exploration.

The sound of a bronze bell marked the transition into Silence. Prompts—about self, community, ancestors, and time—were distributed in multiple languages, each woman receiving two or three translations. Reading across languages deepened our understanding and embodied the multilingual texture of our group.

Sighs. Gateways to Silence.

We responded through writing, drawing, doodling, or sitting in quiet contemplation. An hour later, we reconvened. Sometimes we shared impressions or ideas. There was no moderation, only translation.

We called this project the Voice of Silence—a name proposed by one participant and embraced by all. It became a caring artistic practice of discovery, creation, and sharing. Beyond these sessions, we organized creative workshops, worked with poetry, prose, photography, and collage, collected sounds, edited audio, walked in nature, and, in the end, held an exhibition.

When we came together, the parts that hurt began to hurt less; the parts that were scary became less so.

Transformations of silence

 For many, carving out space for silence was rare. At times a luxury, at others, a challenge. Yet when we came together, the parts that hurt began to hurt less; the parts that were scary became less so. We witnessed silence transform into Silence.

One woman who recently lost her husband learned to befriend the silence at home. Another found she could not be in silence when others were present. For a third, the Silence we created “became our inner voice screaming out from within us with all its might, unleashing the power of emotions we had ignored or suppressed for years. Some of us didn’t dare to know ourselves, our strength, weakness, our fears, potential, desires, resistance.”

Others spoke of slowing down, listening, and becoming more present. “It’s not just about being quiet, it’s about becoming more whole.” Another described how the process “forced us to remove some things from our lives. We don’t always have to be at everyone’s disposal.”

Through Silence, we all spoke to a recurring theme: we came to see how often we inhabit the role of caregiver, always available to others, rarely to ourselves.

Revaluing care

We realized how deeply we reproduce generational patterns of invisible labor: remunerating only visible tasks like design or accounting, while undervaluing care work—cleaning, cooking, supporting others, maintaining the space. Initially, we treated this as “volunteering,” but through dialogue, we introduced a timesheet to record all labor and share funds based on a common hourly rate. A small step toward revalorizing care.

Each woman involved in the Voice of Silence was compensated, a material acknowledgment of interdependence and time.

This, too, brought tension. One participant felt she was replicating domestic chores in the atelier and losing time for her creative work. But through Silence, she reconnected to her creativity, to other women, and to confidence in an artistic ability she thought she had lost.

The triangle of care

This illustrates how many of us are conditioned to prioritize others’ needs over our own and feel guilty when we don’t do more to be of service to someone or some situation. This imbalance sits at the heart of what we came to call the triangle of care: the intersection between giving care, receiving care, and self-care.

This imbalance sits at the heart of what we came to call the triangle of care: the intersection between giving care, receiving care, and self-care.

Caught in the whirlwind of our own energies, fluctuating emotions, and uneven sense of balance, it is more difficult for us to pause, see, and listen, to pay attention to the micro-messages that come through the twitch of a muscle, a raised eyebrow, a change in the tone of a voice. The Voice of Silence helped turn the tide.

As one woman reflected, “When I learned to give myself Silence, I saw that much of our social behavior comes from ignored emotions, unconscious reactions, or internal pressures. Realizing this helped me view others’ actions with more compassion and understanding, knowing that everyone might be struggling with something inside.”

This process elucidated the interdependence of self-care and care for others, and their overlap with knowledge creation. “This isn’t extractive,” one said. “Everyone can choose whether and how to push their own boundaries. We all have the support of our community.”, said one of our friends.

Another added, “This is why I found this process so enriching: collective knowledge creation is embodied, accessible. We’re not throwing around concepts. We are creating somatic knowledge. Transformation can only ever come from lived, direct understanding.”

On the edges of well-being

We gathered before six each evening, waiting for everyone to arrive. Our chatter filled the room—high, erratic, energetic. With everyone present, we began. Silence would settle gradually. Sometimes someone would erupt in nervous laughter—she’d leave the room to maintain the silence. When we harmonized, the energy got calmer. Over time, our bodies spoke, the knots in our necks and jaws loosening.

“My breathing has deepened. I sleep better. I feel lighter,” one said. “I faced my fears. I used to run away from silence and solitude, but now I see them as part of my growth.” , entrust one to the other

Silence brought well-being, but not without difficulty. Some sessions stirred insomnia or unearthed buried memories. “I fear what I will find in myself,” one woman confessed. Yet confronting these fears lightened their weight. It made us understand that everything is embedded in its opposite, that understanding, accepting, even embracing the opposites is part of transformation.

The trickiness of silence and sharing

The dance between introspection and sharing was smooth at times, uneasy at others. Though everything—participating, responding to prompts, sharing—was optional, choice being a pillar of our process, there was an implicit pressure: while some wanted more time to share their thoughts, others were uncomfortable with the perceived expectation of sharing, especially when everyone else had already spoken. But whatever the immediate emotions, it was clear to all how important exchange was.

“Listening to my friends’ thoughts, meeting their inner worlds, hearing how they viewed themselves from different angles, was actually quite beautiful. It opened new horizons for me. Gave me fresh perspectives. Seeing people express themselves so courageously was definitely one of the most inspiring parts of this process.”

But six months is just a scratch on the surface of unlearning a lifetime’s conditioning. One participant admitted, “I started thinking about my rights, my interactions inside and outside the home. Things I’d never considered. But I’m always busy—I don’t know if I’ll continue.”

The whole experience of Voice of Silence was like swimming in a river, one whose source is faraway in both time and place. We meandered together, intertwining, each following her own current. The river will continue long after us.

At the exhibition, we invited visitors to stand at the riverbank. To glimpse a fragment of what we discovered and to feel how its flow might connect to their own.

This article was carried out with the support of the AGEE – Alliance for Gender Equality in Europe.