2024-03-24 03:30:35
The works of the contemporary Czech artist Filomena Borecká and the collection of the museum in North Macedonia, to which the artists donated the works after the devastating earthquake, are represented by a pair of new exhibitions in Prague’s National Gallery. The vernissage took place on Thursday evening in the Trade Fair Palace. However, it was disrupted by members of the initiative drawing attention to the situation in the Gaza Strip.
The opening of exhibitions in the Trade Fair Palace was disrupted by the happening of an art collective that wanted to draw attention to the situation in Gaza. Photo: Michal Blecha Video: Shawky Gamal
The Prague collective of artists, which calls itself Stop the Genocide in Gaza, took the floor for a few tens of seconds at the opening of the National Gallery’s season. “Good evening everyone, we are interrupting the opening on behalf of the art collective,” Yara Abu Aataya, a Palestinian designer living in the Czech Republic and a graduate of the University of Applied Arts, announced into the microphone.
First of all, she recalled that she exhibited at the same place six months ago as part of the Designblok festival. “I was born in Gaza and my family is still in Gaza. As are millions of other innocent civilians. It is imperative that we act and not turn a blind eye,” she continued.
At that moment, security was already trying to take away her microphone, so the artist was surrounded by other activists. According to her claim, there are “massacres of local residents” in Gaza, she said. “In the Czech Republic they are silent. Journalists are silent. Art institutions are silent. It’s time to act. Let’s not be silent,” urged the designer. The members of the collective, which also includes the artist Vladimír 518, the musician Tomáš Klus or the artists Vladimír Turner and Epos 257, finally threw down leaflets from the corridors and shouted “ceasefire”, the English term for cessation of fire. They also projected the Gaza sign onto the facade of the building. They posted a recording of the event on Instagram. “Thank you for the expression of support,” responded the director of the National Gallery, Alicja Knast, immediately after their performance. “However, I would like to give the floor to the people who worked a lot on that exhibition and it is their big day. Thank you once again for the performance,” she added.
The Gaza Strip is facing an offensive after militants from the Palestinian terrorist movement Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7 last year, killing around 1,200 people and abducting around 250 others. Israel subsequently launched a retaliatory operation that forced the evacuation of more than a million Gazans. According to Hamas-controlled authorities, more than 30,000 Palestinians have died since October. The number cannot be independently verified. Representatives of the member states of the European Union called for an immediate humanitarian pause this week in Brussels. According to the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the Gaza Strip is “on the brink of famine”.
Collection of solidarity
People came to Veletržní palác on Thursday evening for the opening of the season of the National Gallery, which opened two new exhibitions. The first is called No Feeling Lasts Forever and represents the so-called Solidarity Collection from the Skopje Museum of Contemporary Art in North Macedonia. The collection includes works by Pablo Picasso, David Hockney, Bridget Riley and Niki de Saint Phalle, who supported the city out of solidarity after the devastating earthquake in the summer of 1963. Because of it, more than 1,000 people died immediately, more than 3,000 others were injured, and approximately 200,000 people ended up without home.
As part of the reconstruction of the destroyed city after the earthquake, it was decided to establish a new museum of contemporary art, to which authors and institutions from all over the world donated their works. The first part of the Prague exhibition chronologically records the foundation of the collection, its development and gradual expansion. The second part offers the view of contemporary creators.
“The collection resonates with today precisely with the theme of solidarity, which we believe needs to be resurrected. I also see the uniqueness of the exhibition in that it brings a new perspective on the history of post-war modern art,” says project co-curator Rado Ištok from Slovakia.
Special audio guides to selected works were created by artists Jesper Alvaer and Isabela Grosse, among others. “The visitor who will go through the exhibition can therefore orient himself with a chronological view of history, but he can also be surprised by the very subjective views of contemporary artists,” adds Ištok.
An even different view of the event from 1963 is provided, for example, by the writer Barbi Marković, who wrote a fictitious travel diary. It introduces visitors to the complex and multi-layered history of the city.
The exhibition of works from the North Macedonian collection was created in cooperation with the museum in Skopje and Kunsthalle Vienna, where it took place last year. The Prague part is expanded with works that were donated by Czechoslovak artists or the local National Gallery after the earthquake, for example by Emil Filla, Jindřich Štyrský, Jan Zrzavý or Mikuláš Medek. The exhibition in the Trade Fair Palace will last until September 29.
Brook Andrew’s work is pictured in the exhibition of the Skopje Solidarity Collection, which can be seen at the Trade Fair Palace. | Photo: CTK
Breath of thoughts
The second new show is called Breath of Quiet Thoughts and presents the work of Filomena Borecká, a forty-six-year-old Czech sculptor and artist living in Paris. It focuses on visually hard-to-grasp topics such as breathing, relationships or the passage of time.
Filomena Borecká at an exhibition of her works in the Veletržní palace. | Photo: CTK
According to the organizers, the author expresses herself through a drawing, which gives her the opportunity to immediately capture a moment and an authentic experience.
Directly for the National Gallery, Borecká created a large-format abstract drawing depicting “an inner landscape carried by the breath, which will allow viewers to find themselves right in the middle of the act of creation”, said Adriana Šmejkalová, curator of the exhibition.
It explores the motifs of togetherness and reciprocity and emphasizes the author’s long-term interest in the topic of breathing. Borecká’s work points to the deep interconnectedness of all living things. “Inhalation and exhalation have no individual boundaries and are constantly shared,” says the author. Her works can be seen in the Veletržní palác until September 8.
Video: There is nowhere to run in Gaza, says an expert
“To call the current situation in Rafah a humanitarian disaster is a big euphemism,” political scientist Zora Hesová said on the Spotlight show last month. | Video: Dominika Perlínová