Edna Strenja

Edna Strenja was born in Pula in 1982. She graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Venice. She is the founder and director of the choir Praksa in Pula, which promotes antifascist values through its activities. Since the choir’s founding in March 2014, she has led workshops on antifascist songs in Toulouse, Malmö, Lund, Vienna, Pula, and New York. She edited the first two albums of the choir Praksa in 2019 and the album Praksa pjeva Mondine (Praksa Sings the Mondine, 2022). She is currently working on a third album titled Borba u pjesmama Nella Milottija (The Struggle in the Songs of Nella Milotti). Alongside antifascist and socially engaged songs, she is particularly interested in folk music, especially from the Balkan region. To deepen her musical skills, she trained at the East European Cultural Foundation (EECF) in New York, with maestro Stefče Stojkovski in North Macedonia, and with maestro Aleksandar Saša Karlić at the conservatory in Venice. She plays the instruments bugaria and nonolo in the group Arkul from Roč that plays traditional music. Together with Dario Marušić and Marin Kranjec, she participates in the project Musica affrescata (Frescoed Music), performing medieval songs on instruments depicted in frescoes in Istrian medieval churches. She collaborates with numerous international choirs and musicians. In addition to her passion for music, she is an avid photographer, actively working in photography since 2013. She has exhibited in group shows in Pula, Rijeka, Zagreb, Sarajevo, and Belgrade, winning multiple awards. At the 2018 Photography Salon in Vinkovci, she won first prize for the series Tata i ja – objektivizacija jednog sjećanja (Dad and I – Objectification of a Memory), which was later exhibited in solo shows in Zagreb, Split, and Belgrade. She also exhibits the independent photographic project Vitiligo – aposemija duše (Vitiligo – Aposemy of the Soul) in Venice, Pula, Pićan, and Rijeka. She lives and works in Pula.