Jana Gerzova

Analýza jedného z kľúčových feministických diel, ktoré vytvorila Eva Filová v roku 2001 pre výstavu Veľké mlieko, a ktoré bolo neskôr zaradené na medzinárodnú výstavu Gender Check. Feminity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe (2009). Ide o Filovej sarkastický komentár k slovenskej spoločnosti, kde sa nepodarilo realizovať odluku cirkvi od štátu, a kde sa prostredníctvom konzervatívnych poslancov a poslankýň reprezentujúcich kresťanské politické strany opakovane vracajú návrhy obmedzujúce ľudské práva žien a ľudí z LGBT. Apropriovaním obrazových citátov z dejín umenia (maľba Jana van Eycka z roku 1437 a fotografia Pavla Hudeca-Ahasvera zo 60. rokov 20. storočia) a pornografických časopisov ukazuje, ako hlboko sú u nás zakorenené dva ženské archetypy – svätice a hriešnice –, zdedené práve kresťanstvom.
The analyse one of the key feminist works created by Eva Filová in 2001 for the exhibition Big Milk, which was later included in the international
exhibition Gender Check. Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe (2009). It is Filová´s sarcastic commentary on Slovak society that failed to implement the separation of church and state, and, where proposals restricting the human rights of women and LGBT community repeatedly return through conservative MPs representing Christian political parties. By appropriating visual quotes from art history (a painting by Jan van Eyck from 1437 and a photograph by Pavel Hudec-Ahasver from the 1960s) and, pornographic magazines, she shows how deeply rooted in our society are the two female archetypes - the saint and the sinner – which is the legacy of Christianity.

Annotation The article reflects upon the challenges of the current documenta 15, considered in a broader historical context. It highlights the importance of the Nigerian art theorist Okwui Enwezor (documenta 11, 2002) who, by rejecting Eurocentrism and applying a post-colonial view of the global art scene to the selection of artists, paved the way for the ruangrupa artists from Jakarta, Indonesia. Like documenta 11, this year is also dominated by projects, where the results of collective actions have been preferred over individual works, the outputs of which often take the form of archives or libraries, in which political activism dominates art, even if the output is a picture or an installation. The article also addresses the People's Justice banner, which became the subject of public debate, and which, after its accusation of being anti-Semitist, was covered and later removed. The question arises why a work, created twenty years ago, four years after the fall of the Suharto regime as a coping with repression during his thirty-two-year military dictatorship, should be exhibited at documenta 15. What was the goal? The paper emphasizes the challenges of intercultural dialogue, the possibility of understanding historical events interpreted from different geopolitical, ideological, and cultural perspectives. The article concludes by the statement that intercultural dialogue can only work if there is empathy towards the Other, but it must be mutual. Therefore, it is somewhat surprising that the Russian aggression in Ukraine, which the entire European Union is experiencing intensely, including Germany, where there are around 700,000 Ukrainian migrants, remained on the documenta without a response.

V predloženej štúdii ide o pokus pozrieť sa na otvorený cyklus Daniela Fischera Maľba v krajine (od roku 1985) z perspektívy súčasnosti poznačenej akcelerovaním krízového vzťahu medzi človekom a prírodou. Neutešená realita hroziaca ekologickou katastrofou je v súčasnosti problémom, o ktorom sa široko diskutuje, pretože zmeny spôsobené dlhodobými a stále sa zrýchľujúcimi ľudskými aktivitami výrazne ovplyvňujú stav Zeme, jej povrchu, atmosféry, biotopu. Za posledných dvesto rokov tento proces podrobovania si prírody akceleroval natoľko, že odborníci hovoria o antropocéne, novej etape vo vývoji Zeme, kde sa dôležitým, často deštrukčným geologickým činiteľom stáva sám človek. I keď úloha hľadať východiská z tejto slepej uličky leží na pleciach vedcov, ukazuje sa, že umenie v tomto procese nemusí stáť bokom. Na príklade tvorby slovenského výtvarníka Daniela Fischera (1950), ukážem, ako sa prikláňa na stranu tých, ktorí odmietajú pristupovať k prírode pragmaticky ako k zdroju energie, surovín a potravy, a ako alternatívu predkladá ideu obnoveného partnerstva medzi človekom a prírodou. Táto akceptácia prírody nie je sprevádzaná nostalgiou za strateným rajom, ale uvedomením si nutnosti zmeniť náš spôsob bytia vo svete. Pre Fischera sú kľúčové tri pojmy –  príroda, umenie a kultúra. Príroda „symbolizuje to, čo nás presahuje a čoho sme zároveň súčasťou“. Umenie „konfrontuje človeka so životnou výzvou – ísť cestou dozrievania, podstúpiť dobrodružstvo kvalitatívnej premeny vedomia, keď opustíme egocentrické orientácie v mene altruistických“, a pred „mať“ uprednostníme „byť“. A nakoniec je tu kultúra, ktorá by sa mala podľa autora stať „akýmsi  ,katalyzátoromʻ premeny ega na eko, premeny vzťahu ,jaʻ na ,tyʻ“.  Tieto názory formulované už v osemdesiatych rokoch minulého storočia sú prekvapujúco blízke aktuálnym tézam o postantropocentrickom etickom myslení (Joanna Zylinska: Etické minimum pre antropocén / Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene  (2014).

The reviewer analyzes the conception of the recently-opened internet platform Secondary Archive, dedicated to making women artists from V4 countries more visible. The visibility strategy is something she regards as a key feminist instrument, for revising and rewriting the history and the present of art from a gender perspective. She reproaches the project for narrowing the understanding of how the "lens of gender" is perceived, as the archive has been composed not just of feminist artists but also of those with a neutral stance on feminism, in some extreme cases declaring themselves anti-feminist. This diversity makes it plain the archive is built on the principle of broad openness, as a database into which all women artists can in theory be included, such as pro-regime artists of the fifties, representing socialist realism. While the reviewer accepts database even with such a contextual conception, such a conception, and structure and aims, ought to be differently formulated. She points out that in selecting woman artists from Slovakia, several key personalities are left out. Here she is focused not on who might be in the archive, but rather on the logic applied in making the selection. She draws attention to the fact that, were we to read the simplest delineation of the female line from Ester Šimerová-Martinčeková to Klára Bočkayová then we have here (excepting Fulierová) a comparable group of experimenting artists, though there is between the oldest (b. 1909) and youngest (b. 1948) an almost forty-year difference. However if we read through the lens of gender, then there are serious breaks in this line-not just because Šimerová-Martinčeková has distanced herself from feminist interpretations of her work and gender played no important role in the work of Kraicová and Fulierová, but chiefly because Anna Daučíková (b. 1950) is not represented, an artist who has taken feminism as a lifelong stand. Without her, it is impossible to grasp what Zora Rusinová calls the "latent feminism" of other women artists. At the same time she queries the method of selection, because though this is an archive, its center of gravity is not the oldest generation of women artists but the youngest, born after 1980, in a ratio of 7:28. She asks what this inverted lens might be expressing. Does it not unintentionally create the impression that the history of women-artists dates only from the turn of the new millennium? Still, for all the enunciated objections, she considers this an important project. As this is a work in progress, there is hope that the lacking major artists of the elder and middle generations will be added to the database, the feminist dimension strengthened, and the uncorrected errors removed

FEM POSITIVE
Jana Geržová: Eva Filová  – The Seven Ages of Woman
In the permanent feature of the Profil magazine we introduce feminist artworks of domestic artists with the ambition to create a collection of feminist artworks, which we would also like to release in the form of a book, thus offering readers reliable navigation in the territory of gender-specific art. Staring out from the already existing rich archive of the magazine, we have decided that it will consist of at least a hundred feminist works and, if we exceed this limit, that will only be further proof that, even though feminism is not a mainstream art in Slovakia, the feminist discourse, which is received by the majority of the population with embarrassment, has significantly changed the mindset of many artists and, via their artworks, also that of a large part of exhibition visitors. The current contribution to this feature is the interpretation of a site-specific installation The Seven Ages of Woman (2003) made by Eva Filová (b. 1968).

Rozhovor Jany Geržovej s kurátormi Petrom Nedomom (výstava: Súčasná britská maľba), Petrom Vaňousom (výstava: Motýlí efekt) a kurátorkou Jane Neal (výstava Nightfall. New Tendecies in Figurative Paintig).
Pražská Galéria Rudolfinum, ktorá má v sieti českých galérií špecifické postavenie vďaka schopnosti konfrontovať najlepších domácich autorov a autorky s osobnosťami súčasnej medzinárodnej  scény, uzavrela v máji 2013 koncepčne premyslený výstavných triptych venovaný fenoménu súčasnej maľby. Takto monotematicky postavený projekt zameraný na jediné médium, v dobe, ktorú charakterizuje hybridné miešanie a vzájomné ovplyvňovanie rôznorodých médií,  ktorú Rosalind Kraussová a Peter Weibel označili za postmediálnu, vyvolal celý rad otázok, ktoré sú reflektované v sérii rozhovorov s kurátormi.

Nedávna posmrtná retrospektívna výstava Júliusa Kollera (1939 – 2007) v Slovenskej národnej galérii bola excelentnou ukážkou kurátorského výskumu, napriek tomu, že odľahčený názov referoval viac o charaktere časti autorovho diela ako o stratégiách, ktoré Petra Hanáková a Aurel Hrabušický použili. Už príspevok Petry Hanákovej Diagnostika Kollerovej pozostalosti, ktorý odznel na konferencii o diele Júliusa Kollera (SNG, apríl 2009) a bol uverejnený v časopise Profil avizoval, že retrospektíva nebude nostalgickou spomienkou na autora, ktorý zomrel nečakane a predčasne v okamihu, keď sa začínal vďaka premyslenej podpore spriaznených inštitúcií, kurátorov a umelcov presadzovať aj na medzinárodnej scéne, ale pokusom o kritickú revíziu doterajších prístupov k jeho tvorbe. Aj keď je zrejmé, že istú podvratnosť, ktorú metodika založená na prepisovaní dejín umenia so sebou prináša, vniesla do projektu Petra Hanáková, opierajúc sa o prvé výsledky spracúvania Kollerovej rozsiahlej pozostalosti, predstavujúcej  200 balíkov autorovej „kultúrnej produkcie,“ bol to práve Aurel Hrabušický, ktorý bol postavený pred takmer sizyfovskú úlohu. Ako interpret, ktorý sa autorovej tvorbe venoval dlhodobo, už pred rokom 1989, pričom podstatným spôsobom prispel k mýtu Kollera ako bezprecedentného konceptuálneho umelca, musel sa v okamihu zverejnenia autorovej pozostalosti nevyhnutne pozrieť z inej perspektívy nielen na samo autorovo dielo ale chtiac-nechtiac aj na vlastné staršie texty. Aj keď Hrabušický túto metodiku nikde nedeklaruje, a skôr zdôrazňuje, že jeho cieľom bolo využiť vlastné Kollerove texty „ako východisko a oporu ďalších interpretačných komentárov“ v jeho štúdii nájdeme viaceré konštatovania, ktoré vyvolávajú otázku, či interpretácie napísané po roku 1989 pripisujúce Kollerovi pozíciu ťažiskového autora druhej polovice 60. rokov sú primerané, a či by sme sa nemohli na jeho tvorbu, predovšetkým na obdobie raných 60. rokov, pozrieť aj inak. Jednou z takýchto pasáží textu Aurela Hrabušického je konštatovanie, že „... v šesťdesiatych rokoch bol [Koller] outsiderom nielen umeleckej, ale aj avantgardnej scény v bývalom Československu. V druhej polovici 60. rokov mal síce niekoľko autorských výstav... ale odohrávali sa skôr v marginálnych výstavných priestoroch, nevzbudili pozornosť tzv. mienkotvornej kritiky a ak aj áno, tak skôr v negatívnom zmysle.“ Pretože Aurel Hrabušický nešpecifikuje, koho mal na mysli, rozhodla som sa namiesto štandardnej recenzie výstavy obrátiť sa na niekoľkých kritikov a kurátorov, respektíve kritičky a kurátorky, ktoré a ktorí v inkriminovanom období svojimi výstavnými projektmi a reflexiou aktuálnej výtvarnej scény spoluvytvárali obraz umenia 60. rokov. Okrem Ivy Mojžišovej (1939), Juraja Mojžiša (1938) a Ľuby Belhoradskej (1936) som oslovila aj Zuzanu Bartošovú (1946), ktorá bola v rokoch 1964 – 1969 ešte len študentkou dejín umenia na Filozofickej fakulte Univerzity Komenského, pretože som predpokladala, že v kontexte Kollerových aktivít, realizovaných v spolupráci s Petrom Bartošom, by mohla podať zaujímavé svedectvo o autorových umeleckých začiatkoch, respektíve o genéze jej vzťahu k autorovej tvorbe. Do ankety som zaradila aj názory dvoch, od Kollera o generáciu mladších výtvarníkov – Dezidera Tótha (1947) a Otisa Lauberta (1946), ktorí pri rôznych príležitostiach deklarovali, že boli Kollerovou tvorbou ovplyvnení.

Publikácia je výsledkom vedeckovýskumnej úlohy, ktorá sa v rokoch 2000 – 2004 realizovala na pôde Vysokej školy výtvarných umení. Projekt bol zameraný na vyhľadávanie, spracovanie a umeleckohistorické vyhodnotenie autentických dobových textov o domácom umení druhej polovice 20. storočia, ktoré sú cenným prameňom pri rekonštrukcii, poznaní a chápaní umenia sledovaného obdobia. Do práce bolo zaradených viac ako sto historických dokumentov, čo predstavuje jednu tretinu všetkých excerpovaných materiálov, ktoré sa dostali do užšieho výberu.
Cieľom publikácie je ponúknuť čitateľom taký súbor textov, ktorý by ukázal minulosť očami jej aktívnych účastníkov a súčasne poukázal na kontextuálnosť a procesuálnosť hodnotenia umeleckej tvorby, to znamená relatívnosť dobových interpretácií na jednej strane a úskalia dodatočnej mýtizácie a mystifikácie minulosti na strane druhej.

The interview was recorded in 2009 as part of my project of oral history, which was based upon the collection, transcription and interpretation of authentic statements of painters, whose artwork fundamentally influenced Slovak painting from the late 1950s to the present day. The transcription of this interview, which we repeatedly recorded in the restaurant of Hotel Barónka in Rača (part of Bratislava, Slovakia) was supposed to be included in my publication Talks about Painting. An overview of Slovak painting through oral history (published in 2009). I sent the first version of the transcribed interview to Stano Filko by post and asked him to authorise it. When I visited him in person at his home in Rača, Stano Filko showed me a transcript of the interview, the first six pages which were densely written with comments. When I tried to decipher the meaning of the comments he had made, considering them a possible source of clarification of the recorded statements, it turned out that ex post he himself could not even do it. We could read only some single words, rarely an entire meaningful sentence, but neither brought more clarity to the interview; quite the contrary. To my question When did you become close friends with Alex Mlynárčik? He originally answered We were classmates. In the corrected version, however, it seems like he had never become close friends with Mlynárčik and, was only his classmate. As Stano Filko was not willing to authorize my transcription of the interview, we agreed to withdraw from our cooperation. I complied with the agreement and did not publish the transcript of the interview. I am doing it only now, after having found out that Filko has appropriated our joint working paper and sold it to a private collection as textual art.

V predloženej štúdii sa zameriam na vybrané príklady miestne špecifických inštalácií vytvorených pre dnes už nefunkčné synagógy, ktoré sa v deväťdesiatych rokoch minulého storočia transformovali na centrá súčasného umenia.3 Sústredím sa na tri typy inštalácií, ktoré reprezentujú širšie spektrum možných relácií medzi súčasným umením a štruktúrami synagógy ako historickej architektúry, ale predovšetkým ako sakrálneho priestoru, ktorý je poznačený tragickými dejinami židovstva vrátane holokaustu.
V prvom bloku budem analyzovať diela, ktoré s týmto kontextom vedome pracovali, a to buď priamo, alebo formou abstrahovania od konkrétnej udalosti – holokaustu, uprednostňujúc metaforu a symbolický jazyk nevýtvarného, často banálneho materiálu, pričom ich spoločným menovateľom bolo vyhnúť sa estetizovaniu tejto tragickej udalosti.

Do druhej skupiny som zaradila tri výnimočné diela, ktoré reagujú na synagógu ako na sakrálny priestor, ale súčasne otvárajú citlivé otázky súvisiace s nerovnoprávnym postavením ženy s prihliadnutím na judaizmus a dispozičné i symbolické členenie synagógy.

V poslednej tematickej skupine uvediem inštalácie, ktoré na prvý pohľad nepracujú s historickým ani náboženským kontextom synagógy, dokonca by sme mohli povedať, že do priestoru intervenujú spôsobom, ktorý je na hranici znesvätenia. Poukážem na to, že aj diela, ktoré sú neutrálne alebo sa voči miestu zdanlivo vymedzujú negatívne, môžu prinášať nové obsahy, približujúc sa k sakrálnemu okľukou, využívajúc stratégie, ktoré idú nad rámec bežných očakávaní a tradičných náboženských rituálov.

This essay maps the relationship that current artists and curators have with nature, and above all their effort at establishing an intermittent connection with it, where a forest, tree or plant is perceived as a sensing or even thinking entity. The author draws on several model exhibitions mounted recently in the Czech Republic and Slovakia – How Forests Think (Jihlava, Czech Republik, 2018),  Into the Wild (SNG, Schaubmarov mlyn, Slovakia, 2020), To Be a Forest - Helena Tóthová, Bratislava, Slovakia, 2018), Being Lanscape –  Miloš Šejn, Plzeň, Czech Republik, 2010), 4 Ways Of Nature (Nitra, Slovakia, 2020), placing them in the broader context of post-anthropocentric thought, building on the idea that “it does not consider the  human  to be the  dominant or the most important species, nor does it see the world as arranged solely  for  human  use  and  benefit” (Joanna Zylinska: Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene, 2014).

Art work based on appropriating a piece by other artists represents an important segment in the art of Ladislav Čarný (b. 1949), yet these are not a homogenous group of works in terms of time of origin, media employed or artistic strategies. His references to iconic artists of older as well as modern art in the form of citations appear as early as the 1970s, but his early model works – which we might consider in the context of interpretation (to stay with a term authentic to that time) – came about somewhat later in the 80s, though they were paradoxically a by-product of his solutions to other artistic problems. However, it was only the following decade that was crucial in this respect, centered on the 1995 works Putrefactio est omnium rerum mater and Konceptuálna maľba [Conceptual Painting]. These were based on intertextual dialog with the past, on Bakhtinian dialogicity, which occurred not at the level of dialog between artists (original or appropriated), but directly between the texts/works (in the first he appropriated one of F. X. Messerschmidt’s Character Heads from the 18th century; in the other paintings by Francisco Goya from the so-called House of the Deaf Man in the early 19th century). In this study I address works in which Čarný appropriated iconic pieces by Marcel Duchamp. 
The text is a fragment of a larger study, which is to be part of an artist monograph now in preparation. Supported by a scholarship from the Slovak Arts Council (FPU).
Jana Geržová, art historian and critic and chief editor of the art journal Profil súčasného výtvarného umenia / Profile of Contemporary Art.

The reviewer describes the book as an interesting view on the phenomenon of migration, which is not examined primarily through the prism of its current economic, social, political or security implications, but with regards to contemporary art. Despite this, the issue is embedded in a broader historical and theoretical framework – Petersen points out the so-called “mobility turn”, for instance. In the clarification of the concept of migration, she primarily refers to the book by T. J. Demos – The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary During Global Crisis (2013), containing the definitions of the main types of migration (diaspora, refugees, nomadism), which she further specifies (circular migration). Regarding the analysis of specific works, she deals with the concept of “migratory aesthetics”, referring to Mieke Bal and Griselda Pollock and, to the correlations of aesthetics, politics and ethics.
The reviewer considers the parts of the book, in which the writer analyses specific works, to be the most significant. It is well visible in the detailed interpretation of the works by Danh Vo - We The People (Detail), 2011 – 2016 (its detail is on the cover of the book) and Isaac Julien - Western Union: Small Boats, 2007 (concluding the book). Both works aptly illustrate a spectrum of issues pointed out by Petersen in the book. The conclusion of the review raises the question to what extent can a book help to tackle the challenge of migration and its impact on art in Slovakia. Although the current migration crisis does not directly impact the country, this issue resonates not only among domestic artists (in particular Daniela Krajčová and her projects with immigrants located in Slovakia at the refugee camp in Rohovce and Oto Hudec, who has, in the long term, examined not only the current issues of migration, but also its causes), but also at various exhibitions and discussions it triggers (e.g. Fear of the Unknown, Kunshalle Bratislava, 2016, curator Lenka Kukurová). The question that has remained to be answered is how to apply the conclusions of the book on the migration that occurred in 1993, after the breakup of Czechoslovakia, when dozens of Slovak artists emigrated to the Czech Republic: What type of migrants do they represent and, what has been the impact of such a departure of  Slovak artists on Slovak and Czech art? This issue has also been highlighted by the recent exhibition of Monogrammista T. D. called Migrant (2018, The House of Arts, Brno, Czech Republik) prepared by the Slovak artist Dezider Tóth, who, after 66 years, moved to Brno, where he now lives and works.

FEM POSITIVE
Jana Geržová: Emőke Vargová  – Medusa
In the permanent feature of the Profil magazine we introduce feminist artworks of domestic artists with the ambition to create a collection of feminist artworks, which we would also like to release in the form of a book, thus offering readers reliable navigation in the territory of gender-specific art. Staring out from the already existing rich archive of the magazine, we have decided that it will consist of at least a hundred feminist works and, if we exceed this limit, that will only be further proof that, even though feminism is not a mainstream art in Slovakia, the feminist discourse, which is received by the majority of the population with embarrassment, has significantly changed the mindset of many artists and, via their artworks, also that of a large part of exhibition visitors. The current contribution to this feature is the interpretation of a site-specific installation Medusa (2000) made by Emöke Vargová (b. 1965).

In a Skirt – Sometimes, about the exhibition having the potential to open a discussion
Veronika Bromová, Kateřina Vincourová, Markéta Othová, Elen Řádová, Štěpánka Šimlová, Míla Preslová, Michaela Thelenová, Zdena Kolečková, Lenka Klodová, Alena Kotzmanová, Markéta Vaňková, Martina Klouzová-Niubó, Kateřina Šedá
Curator: Pavlína Morganová

6. 2. – 18. 5. 2014 Moravian Gallery, Brno, Czech Republic
5. 11. 2014 –  8. 3. 2015, Golden Ring House, City Gallery Prague, Czech Republic
Curator: Pavlína Morganová

Abstract
The exhibition In a Skirt – Sometimes with the subtitle Art of the 1990s was conceived by Pavlína Morganová as a project in which she, by means of the artworks of fourteen Czech female artists, tested a provoking hypothesis related to her attempt to look at the Czech art of the last decade of the 20th century through a different prism, claiming that in the Czech Republic it was, for the first time, possible “to tell the story of art history without the artists” in the 1990s. She started out from the fact that not only after 1989 strong solitary female artists emerged on the Czech scene, but there were even several consecutive generations of significant female artists appearing as well, whom she, ex-post, from the current perspective, sees as the ones who have become the “carriers of a new artistic expression.” She starts to draft their lineage with Milena Dopitová, who was the first of them to gain respect not only in the Czech Republic, but also in an international context. The project, in which the curator fundamentally highlighted the importance of the position of female artists as well as their contribution to the shaping of Czech art of the 1990s, quite naturally raised the expectation for this to be a model exhibition of a self-confident, fully feminist curatorial attitude. This interpretation was not only abetted by the title In a Skirt – Sometimes of the exhibition, but also by the concept of the accompanying catalogue, which includes, in addition to the initial study, in which Pavlína Morganová provided a comprehensive overview of the contemporary discourse on feminism on the Czech scene after 1989, also a paper by the renowned feminist sociologist Alica Červinková and the unique matrilinear diagram by Martina Pachmanová, in which she traces the maternal line of art history in Bohemia from 1790 to the present, as well as interviews with female artists raising issues questioning the manner in which they reflect gender issues in their oeuvre or their relation to feminism. Despite these feminist indications, a review with the title Feminist blindness of the Czech art scene by the young critic Petra Hlaváčková appeared on the opinion-shaping portal www.artalk.cz. In this review she asks “how can it be, that even today it is possible to tell the history of Czech female art without feminism?” and notes, that without this framework the project has become a “mere show of the oeuvre of female artists without a significant shift of the concept.” The paper has endeavoured to search for answers to the question of whether this criticism is justified and/or what has happened, that a project having a number of attributes of a feminist approach, which are clearly legible in the concept of the catalogue, can, as a whole, be seen as non-feminist? 
Keywords: ambivalent reception of of feminism – Czech Republic – Art of the 190s – Western standards versus local specifics

In this text I consider the oeuvre of Adriena Šimotová (1926-2014) from the perspective of her personal traumatic experience after the death of her husband, the major artist Jiří John, in 1972. Most interpretation has stressed that her art consists of autonomous artefacts, unencumbered by the artist's life story; in contrast I attempt to show that this traumatic experience has made a direct mark on part of her work, above all on a group of 1980s paper objects-not as iconographic motifs of death and dying, but rather as a direct influence on the form and the means of working with the substance of paper, where the artist's body plays a substantial role, along with two contrary gestures. These are the gesture of etching in the sense of traumatism and the revealing of one's own vulnerability, and the gesture of touching associated with the act of leave-taking. I draw on Domna C. Stanton's concept of autographic writing, who emphasizes its therapeutic purpose: to affirm a female subject. Here I take autography's therapeutic effect in two senses. The first is primarily as self-reflection and the reconstruction of the self, i.e. creating and confirming as well as of transcribing the self. In Šimotová's case, this relates to the process of coming to terms with the death of Jiří John; this was both a process of transcribing her "self" and seeking a kind of substitute coordinates that would redefine the space of her life. The second meaning of the therapeutic effect as I understand it is to do with the process of creation, where pain marks the material, such that her technique of tearing, imprinting, cutting or perforating functions literally as a medium communicating emotional information. In such a context, we can read the artistic transforming of experience with loved ones' disease and death as a materialized act of grieving; moreover Šimotová's strategy can be loosely linked to caregiving and safekeeping, which are attributes associated with care ethics.