Po praslici / In Female Tail

About

It is primarily about the youngest generation of women artists, who offer their perspective on how the identity of contemporary women is influenced by their relatives and ancestors, especially in regions that are closer to the rural environment in their mindset. This is an authentic insider's view, as the authors work with their own experience of this environment. They translate it into fragments of childhood memories, e.g. through references to the shapes of climbing frames, echoes of time spent together or family celebrations.

Despite the fact that in the context of the rural environment there is often talk of clan mentality, of stronger family ties, which are perceived as the most important, it is possible to see in the exhibition that the situation is more complex. On the surface they may appear strong, but on the inside the bonds are broken by misunderstanding, miscommunication, dependencies and the pervasive hierarchical authoritarianism that falls from older (especially male) relatives to younger ones, specifically young women. This causes an ambivalent relationship with one's own family - a love/hate relationship that is hurtful yet intimate and forces one to re-evaluate one's roots in search of one's identity.

The exhibition of four female painters and one female printmaker turns to the family as the bearer of customs, habits and worldviews. From this most basic unit derives the basis of our own self-image, our place in society and our duties. The authors present the diverse transmission of patterns in the family unit. They touch on personal and collective memory, the acceptance and abandonment of the inherited, they are both critical and celebratory.

Each follows her own line of reasoning, and her own experiences of diverse backgrounds and situations. These are, for example, forms of the functioning of rural family-oriented life in confrontation with the inputs of the modern world. There is a kind of selective modernism - the cheap achievements of globalism are lovingly embraced and quickly incorporated into traditional households. For example, temporary architectural and leisure elements made of plastic, such as party tents, garden chairs or swimming pools, have become part of the visual experience of the countryside for Barbara Durajová. These found their place in the exhibition as elements of improvised exhibition architecture. They brought a contrasting aesthetic of cheap utility to the bourgeois interior of the Pistori Palace, reminiscent of the atmosphere of a family garden party.

The intimacy of bodily touch forms the basis of Katarina Magdiakova's painting programme. It is most naturally encountered in the circle of our closest family members and provides the basis for our relationship with our own bodies and their acceptance in the future. Specifically in this case, it is mainly the female body that is subjected to scrutiny and criticism not only by the media, but often within the family.

The frames that our society puts on women, for example through the view of faith and its interpretation in terms of conservative values, appear on the canvases of Kristína Vacek. The heroines of her canvases are always women who find themselves in an in-between point between freedom and an imaginary imprisonment in prejudices and ideas about the role of women. Window frames or cords are always in contrast with freedom and nature, traditionally associated with the feminine element.

Kristina Rambousek's installation and paintings, on the other hand, reflect the knowledge of herbalism traditionally passed down along feminine lines. Working with natural pigments is also a natural outcome of close contact with nature, which the big city does not offer. The arcane knowledge of the effects of herbs has long been considered dangerous and associated with the power of women in a rebellious position to the patriarchy. Rambousek uses inherited linen canvases as the basis for her alchemical experiments with colour, infusing and blending pigments into random abstract wholes.

Sarah Pekarčíková sensitively perceives the negative side of the customs transmitted by the family. Unhealthy nationalism or alcoholism appears in her ironically stylized still lifes or expressive expressions of shared alcohol consumption, a kind of clan-like collective affinity, while also showing how difficult it is to disrupt it. She uses personal family objects that become the vehicles for kitsch still lifes of nationalist symbols - flags can be seen in them, but also more traditional domestic textiles that once decorated households.

In their works, the graduates from Banská Bystrica and Bratislava probes into the current shape of Slovak society as perceived by a new generation of women. It is evident that they are doing a kind of "revision" - they are not a priori discarding everything inherited, but are looking for and critically evaluating what is beneficial and functional in relation to the changing society and their own self-image. In doing so, they work in a variety of ways, from experimental techniques of exploring and combining natural pigments, to punk ironization, to classical painting and variations of compositions with a predominantly female figure or fragment thereof.

The exhibition was supported from public funds by the Art Support Fund