Pay attention and watch closely. Revice and reflect. Listen to others and to yourself. Confront despair.
The final works exhibited in the Gallery Fotograf combine a sensitivity to their surroundings with an awareness of their own situation. Students at the Academy of Arts Architecture and Design in Prague look around them and explore the contexts in which they find themselves. While sometimes inviting us into seemingly private settings and intimate situations, they end up touching on generational and more general themes and reflecting on societal and planet-wide affairs.
They look at the bureaucratic system and the patriarchal violence encoded in it. In the public space they find manifestations of ideology and traces of the roots of their own hybrid identity. The current crises do not let them sleep, they face anxieties and a sense of emptiness. In darkened apartments, they question their own place in a world where grand narratives have failed and where there seems to be no room for the prospect of a better tomorrow. Despite this seeming, however, they do not resign – instead of searching for a new grand narrative, they engage in storytelling themselves and imagination exercises.
These artists are concluding one of the stages of their studies with this exhibition and we would like to wish them good luck. To wish them not to be completely overwhelmed by the complicated and exhausting present. To wish it for them and for all of us.
Artists: Veronika Olejárová, Darja Lukjanenko, Iryna Drahun, Amélie Tazarourte, Matěj Kos, Markéta Slaná
