2024-03-09 21:18:19
At this year’s Venice Art Biennale, the Czech Republic will offer a metaphor for the story of Lenka the giraffe. The project called The Heart of a Captive Giraffe is Twelve Kilograms Lighter was created by the artist Eva Koťátková, in which she examines human treatment of animals and at the same time criticizes violence and the exploitation of nature.
The international exhibition of contemporary art will be held from April 20 to November 24. Czechs will see the Kitten installation in March 2025, when the Prague National Gallery will exhibit it in a small hall of the Trade Fair Palace.
“In Slané, where the implementation is being prepared, we are nearing the completion of the project. Its main structure is almost finished and in the next month we will focus on artistic fine-tuning. It is not just mine and Evy Koťátková’s project, dozens of people are working on it,” he emphasizes curator Hana Janečková.
The project for the Czech pavilion at the Venice Biennale was selected by an expert jury from 20 proposals. The inspiration was the true story of the giraffe Lenka, who was captured in Kenya in 1954. She was subsequently taken to the Prague Zoo, where she became the first Czechoslovakian giraffe. She survived in captivity for two years, after which her body was donated to the National Museum in Prague, which exhibited it until 2000.
“For me, Lenča’s story is more than just an exhibition project. I see it above all as an open framework, in which voices can be heard in all their multiplicity, which deviate from the official concept of history,” says Eva Koťátková.
The project The heart of a captive giraffe is twelve kilograms lighter will be exhibited in Venice in a temporarily reconstructed joint Czech and Slovak pavilion. The installation is to take the form of an enlarged giraffe neck made of textile and metal placed in the space, which will complement the sculptural casts of Lenka the giraffe’s body.
Multimedia artist Koťátková will return to Venice after 11 years, in 2013 she presented herself in the main pavilion.
This year, Slovakia will be represented in the joint pavilion by the Oty Hudce Floating Arboretum project, which deals with endangered trees and their protection.
The Czech and Slovak pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale in Venice was damaged by a storm a few years ago. By March 25 this year, a partial repair should be completed, which will allow the exhibition of the Koťátkové project. The complete reconstruction of the pavilion is to follow next year, Minister of Culture Martin Baxa from ODS said this Thursday. According to him, the costs of the reconstruction will amount to approximately 70 million crowns. Two thirds will be paid by the Czech Ministry, one third by the Slovak Ministry.
For the Art Biennale in Venice, which alternates with the Architecture Biennale in the Italian city, the Czech side last selected Stanislav Kolíbal’s work in 2019.
The event was first held in 1885 and has been held every odd year since then. Later, an architecture biennale was added every even-numbered year. The recent coronavirus pandemic also affected this event. Four years ago, the biennale was canceled, so the shows moved.