Beyond Nuclear Family: Around The Family Table

About

The project Beyond Nuclear Family, established by the Jindřich Chalupecký Society, evaluates the family as one of the basic units of togetherness found in human communities. The project is aimed primarily at offering a critical review of the modern, western family model, assessing its historical and contemporary, geographical and cultural, utopian and fictitious alternatives. The nuclear family, defined as the marital partnership of a man and a woman living with their biological children, represents an unwritten status quo in western culture. It has become a standard against which other family constellations are measured.   

The exhibition Beyond Nuclear Family: Around the Family Table at alpha nova & galerie futura is one of three exhibition and performative projects focusing on the theme of family in relation to these concepts. It will be followed by shows at Display in Prague and EFA Project Space in New York. Even though each exhibition focuses on a slightly different area of research, the projects are also conceptually linked within the artworks themselves. They pose the question about considering and presenting the nuclear family as the leading paradigm throughout the political, social and educational system as well as the rule of law in the European and American contexts, despite the fact that this model does not correspond to all contemporary realities.  

Beyond Nuclear Family: Around the Family Table focuses on gender roles within the concept of family, the representation of LGBTQAI+ families, the concept of motherhood, and women’s corporealities, as well as on other forms of communality beyond biological connections, even the absence of family, particularly in light of the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on the definition and (non)functioning of the family. It does this in a variety of formats, including performance, video, text, textile works, sculpture, performative readings, discussions, and research presentations. 

Beyond Nuclear Family is the third phase of the Jindřich Chalupecký Society’s long-term project Islands: Possibilities of Togetherness.