Your Head is Full of Butterflies

Over the past months, a project has been developed in collaboration between the Socitey for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, the Unit of Child Psychiatry at the University Children's Hospital Ljubljana, and artist Eva Petrič. The project seeks to create space for different kinds of images — images that do not judge, compare, or demand perfection, but instead invite closeness to oneself.

As the Head of the Department, Dr. Marija Anderluh, emphasizes:

“Images have become the most penetrating way of perceiving the world and are no longer merely companions to words. They are becoming increasingly concrete, short-lived, superficial, and virtual.

We observe how strongly they shape young people’s self-image, their sense of self-worth, and their understanding of their own lives.

Many visual messages are built on comparison, idealization, and simplified notions of success, beauty, and happiness. Such images often evoke feelings of inadequacy, insufficiency, and alienation from oneself and one’s own experiences.

Thus, images do not merely reflect reality — they also shape it, sometimes in ways that wound, increase vulnerability, anxiety, and negative emotional states.”

In dialogue with children and adolescents, works were selected from Eva Petrič’s artistic opus that open space for a different kind of experience — a space of closeness, beauty, connectedness, and hope.

The exhibition will remain on view in the lobby of the Pediatric Clinic until June 9, after which the works will continue accompanying children and adolescents in the department spaces, day hospital, and waiting rooms — like butterflies quietly bringing a sense of closeness and light.

The artworks, selected also in dialogue with children and adolescents, were donated by the artist to the Department of Child Psychiatry at the Pediatric Clinic in Ljubljana.

On the occasion of the exhibition, the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health has also published Eva Petrič’s book

Your Head Is Full of Butterflies in its Slovenian translation. The book was originaljy published in German and English language by Loecker Wien in 2018 and 2021, as part of the PEN Club  Austria Edition.

The exhibition will be opened by Dr. Marko Pokorn, Medical Director of the University Children's Hospital Ljubljana, while Dr. Marija Anderluh will speak about the project.

The musical program will be performed by the guitar duo Tanja Brecelj Vatovec in Martina Kocjančič Kocjan .

We would be delighted by your presence.

Copyright © Eva Petrič, 2026,  All rights reserved.