The National Gallery in Prague is holding the largest exhibition of the internationally established artist Eva Koťátková in the Czech Republic to date
Exhibition My body is not an island it takes the form of a huge body, part fish and part human, thus offering an anatomical walk through the landscape of normativity and oppression, which we are all a part of and which we co-create in our daily lives with our bodies, behavior and stories. In the belly of the fragmented body lie various boxes and shipping crates, from which animal and human beings embodied in costumes seem to be about to escape. The shipping crate motif is a symbol of both movement and transfer – whether voluntary or forced – from one place or state to another, as well as codification and classification, which are typical signs of our urgent need to fit everything into neat boxes and our fear of ambiguity. Costumes are then a second skin that can show emotions that we otherwise do not show, because we cannot express them so easily in words, and also a tool to get closer to the situation of someone whose feelings, attitudes or actions we cannot otherwise understand more deeply. The spirit of the entire installation lies in the collective call for a life with which mutual empathy has a greater place and in which ours, as well as other human and more than human bodies, face less normative pressure and violence.
Each part of the installation conveys one of the stories that reverberate throughout the exhibition space. The stories can be read or heard while wandering through the installations, i.e. the giant body. Their base is a fish head in the back of the space, lined with duvets for the comfort of visitors. During the exhibition, the installation will be inhabited and activated every Saturday afternoon by performers who, with the help of disguises, will share with the public the various stories that the exhibition contains: about a child bullied at school, a shrimp boiled alive, a bush torn from its original environment , to be replanted in the suburbs, and in other bodies that refuse to be named, to which no label can be attached, and which freely express what they feel and what they dream. The installation offers both places for listening or reading, dreaming, resting, sharing stories, as well as for different body positions and different degrees of involvement. My body is not an island thus trying to create a platform empathetically open to those whose voices are silenced, the state is questioned, and are subjected to forced labeling and stigmatization, as well as those who are just as willing to listen in an ally.
Eva Koťátková (b. 1982 in Prague) is a contemporary artist living in Prague. Her work resonates not only in the Czech Republic, but she regularly participates in prestigious international exhibitions of contemporary art, including Document 15 in Kassel, Germany (2022); 16th Istanbul Biennale in Turkey (2019), 17th Jakarta Biennale in Indonesia (2017), New Museum Triennial in New York (2015) or 55th Venice Biennale (2013). Eva is also the co-founder of the Anxiety Institute platform, which creates a space for artists, theorists and activists to research anxiety that spreads across societies and results in insomnia, alienation, loss of empathy, inequalities and violence.
For a long time, he also devotes himself to the concept of themes and work with visual and sensory-developing content for the Futurpolis project: the school of emancipation, which tries to introduce critical pedagogy into Czech education. Critical pedagogy as well as issues of the boundaries of empathy and violence perpetrated on human, animal or plant bodies and souls for the sake of profit or social norms are also the starting point of her installation My body is not an island, prepared for the Great Hall of the Trade Fair Palace.
Eva Koťátková: My body is not an island
7/12 2022–4/6 2023, Veletržní palác, National Gallery Prague
Curator team:
Sandra Patrondirector of the Museum of Contemporary Art CAPC, Bordeaux, France
Rado Istokcurator of the Modern and Contemporary Art Collection of the National Gallery Prague
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