2024-08-04 21:29:25
The countryside as a space of social change and the transformation of human work are the themes of the third year of the biennale In the Matter of Art, which can be seen until September 29 in Prague’s Veletržní palác and Lidice Gallery. It is accompanied by performances or guided tours.
The Great Hall of the Trade Fair Palace has 32 works by artists from Hungary, Germany, Turkey, the Czech Republic and the USA. Eight of them were created directly for the biennial. This was prepared by the Tranzit.cz platform, which has existed since 2002, together with the National Gallery.
“We are pleased that the voice of contemporary artists can be heard and that topics that are not talked about so much can be highlighted,” said gallery director Alicja Knast.
In the palace, people will see multimedia works and spatial installations. For example, Berlin-based Turkish artist Pinar Öğrenci is exhibiting 40 sticks with which rural women from the Black Sea coast fought against thermal and hydropower plants. The audio recording captures the collective banging of sticks on the ground. Belarusian artists Uladzimir Haramovich or Olia Sosnovskaya have processed the protests that have been taking place in their country since 2020. Natalia Perkof, who comes from Uherské Hradiště and started organic farming with her family a few years ago, was again interested in why young people want to grow their own food .
Telegraph poles and wires run through the entire exhibition space. The Biennale, the first years of which took place in 2020 and 2022, was prepared this year by Hungarian curator Katalin Erdődi and her Belarusian colleague Aleksei Borisionok. “In a saturated world of images, we still hardly know how work works, be it agricultural, logistical or creative,” he says.
They perceive the event as an attempt to express the complexities of contemporary life and human work. “The exhibition tries to leave the imaginary border between the countryside and the city and presents a set of stories that cross these borders, from the expropriation of farmers, striking carers, looted museum objects to the extraction of mineral wealth,” says Borisionok.
The curators of this year’s biennial are Aleksei Borisionok and Katalin Erdödi. | Photo: CTK
According to the annotation, the curators figuratively worked with the method of grafting taken from agriculture and medicine, where two different plants or tissues are attached to each other in order to strengthen each other. “The relationship between the individual works in the exhibition can be perceived in a similar way,” the organizers hope.
The second part of the project is located in the Lidice Gallery, which is part of the Lidice Memorial. Ukrainian native Nikita Kadan intervenes in the art collection there with his works, whose “forensic sculptures” document Russia’s war crimes against Ukraine. Filmmaker Marta Popivodová was interested in how Lidice changed as a result of the war tragedy and post-war reconstruction.
“The Lidice art collection is pleased that artists from different parts of the world are once again joining it, who are dealing with its essence, interpretation and expanding its exposition both in our gallery and outside it,” says Miloslav Vorlíček, documenter of the Lidice collection. “The basis of our work is pluralistic communication and dialogue across different points of view, which is why it is important to us that this year’s Biennale in the Matter of Art intensively reflects the legacy of Lidice through our unique solidarity collection,” he adds.