Šimon Chovan
Šimon Chovan, a recent graduate of Sandberg Instituut (Amsterdam), presents his first ever solo exhibition in the Czech Republic, titled Dendrites & Tissues. Chovan's site-specific installation works with a characteristic material sensibility, mixing organic and inorganic substances with a distinctive ochre pigment. In this way, material and conceptual, biological and cultural, human and non-human forms can be understood in their specificity and difference, as well as in their relationship to each other. The inscecane objects into organized units thus resemble structures, systems and networks of various types, be they natural or artificial.
The entire film is set in the Supreme Court in Prague, which becomes an imaginary stage for exploring the symptoms of contemporary cultural unrest. The courtroom itself symbolizes dynamic spaces that involve strong interpersonal and social dynamics and are characterized by a clear hierarchy of power. The space is occupied by four performers who perform gestures such as whispering, preparing to speak, swearing, or trying unsuccessfully to shift the rigid architecture. The protagonists seem to be both actors and observers, imaginary NPCs stuck in the courtroom, constantly preparing for a speech and a narrative that never happens.
Lucie Rosenfeldová
The exhibition project How to (Not) Remember Our Bodies is the outcome of a long-term artistic research on the topic of body memory in the field of reproductive medicine. The exhibition will include a newly produced film by the artist focusing on both the specific individual and collective experiences of reproductive medicine and its historical and political conditioning. It will thus build on the previous film, Uteruses and Brains, which was part of an exhibition at the Kurzor gallery curated by Jan Zálešák in 2022. In contrast to the previous film, the new film will draw on the subjective experiences of women participants in reproductive medicine in the context of Czech and Czechoslovak gynaecology, as well as historical material obtained from the NFA's medical film archive, information gathered from research at the Medical Museum in Prague, and ongoing consultations with experts in the field of bodily memory.
Karolina Raimund
Karolina Raimund (formerly Kohoutková) is an artist, curator and educator whose artistic and pedagogical practice has long focused on body design and performance, addressing feminist and queerness themes.Identitarian issues related to corporeality in her work are complemented by environmentally engaged projects. These levels are interconnected in Karolina's upcoming exhibition, which takes as its starting point an artistic intervention in the landscape that is linked to a specific place, a 3600 m2 farmland in South Moravia, which is still listed as the property of the artist's late great-grandmother.
A cacophony of stories emerging from beneath the earth's surface, told from the perspective of a coal mine seen from the moon. The perspective of the human and non-human actors of Eastern Europe, which the author tries to see not from the perspective of the 18th century Western travelers we know and who have shaped the image of this part of the world for so many years. Inspired by Adam Bobbett's essay "The Spirituality of Coal", Ewelina has spent the last year researching coal mines and the stories associated with them, as well as how deeply coal has penetrated us, powering our electrical reality. Bobbette argues that coal creates the spiritual self of a modern man, and asks this question: How will our modern transition to a post-coal society lead to a reconfiguration of the self?
