The personal and the public in the age of Instagram. How has politics in art changed?

Language accessibility: Czech
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A discussion on the transformations of artistic and curatorial strategies that have pursued political goals in recent years and decades.

Guests: Marie Lukáčová, Milan Mikuláštík, David Kořínek, and Jakub Polách

Moderator: Noemi Purkrábková

One of the strong currents of political critique in art and culture today is the mediation of the experience of those who are overlooked and disadvantaged by mainstream society—often women or queer people but also people excluded because of their skin color or social background or situation. Moreover, the representation of marginalized people, stories, and attitudes in art is often linked to strategies of autofiction and other methods that view global issues through personal experience and identity or otherwise relate them to one’s own position and situation of authorship. Art projects of this type are thus not only autonomous works of art but also an integral part of the personal lives of the creators. Moreover, the emphasis on the personal aspect fits naturally into the expectations created by the online space of social platforms, where authors themselves become an object of interest and a target of public criticism to a degree that was previously unimaginable. What benefits does this situation bring to artists whose work attempts to communicate topics that are unpopular with the majority, socially critical, or otherwise marginalized? What new strategies are offered within the arts for communicating these themes, and how do they relate to traditional institutional frameworks? And what are the pitfalls of person-centered critical art practice today?

Marie Lukáčová is a draughstman, animator, director and educator who works with motifs ranging from ancient legends to contemporary economics, mixing witchcraft and ritual practices with exact data on climate change or financial flows. Her film projects then reformulate symbols borrowed from the field of mythology, politics or local stories. She is a lecturer at the Centre for Audiovisual Studies at FAMU in Prague. 

Kateřina Olivová (1984) is a performer, artist, educator, curator, feminist, and mother. Her artistic practice focuses primarily on the medium of performance, and her main expressive tool is her own fat, naked, queer, feminist body. She is concerned with corporeality and sexuality, relationships, emotions, care, joy, and dreams. She has long been developing and exploring the emancipatory concept of radical body positivity, both in practice and theory.

She published her doctoral research as the book Milk and Honey (2021), in which she presents through interviews with artists, curators, and activists the impacts of parenthood on their personal and professional lives.

Together with Darina Alster, she is currently the head of New Media Studio II at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.

Jakub Polách is a visual artist and micro-influencer. In his practice he oscillates between exhibitions, memes, and camping. As an artistic researcher, he deals with the post-literate subjectivity of late capitalist consumers in the environment of social networks and mainstream media. He is a PhD student at the Department of Art History and Theory at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Brno University of Technology, where he studies the influence of internet meme culture on fan communities.

Milan Mikuláštík (*1975) is a Czech intermedia artist, curator, designer, collector, and journalist based in Prague. He studied in the Studio of Conceptual Trends at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Brno University of Technology under Peter Rónai and later at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in the studios of Intermedia (under Milan Knížák), Visual Communication (under Jiří David), and New Media (under Michal Bielický). 

He has been exhibiting since 1995 in the Czech Republic, abroad, and in cyberspace. In addition to his solo work, Mikuláštík often works in collaboration with other artists. Since 1995 he has been working together with Jan Nálevka in the artistic duo MINA. In 2003 he was one of the founding members of the art-activist group Guma Guar.

From 2005 to 2008 he worked as an editor of the cultural supplement of the magazine Reflex. In the past, he also contributed occasionally to other periodicals (Ateliér, Umělec, Flash Art, Advojka).

Since 2012 he has been lecturing at the Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design, teaching foreign students about Prague’s architecture. From 2014 to 2018 he worked at the same academy as an assistant professor in the Supermedia Studio (headed by David Kořínek). In 2021 he began working at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague as an assistant professor in the studio Painting 2 (headed by Vladimír Skrepl). Since 2023 he has been one of the heads of the studio (in collaboration with Julius Reichl and Aleš Zapletal).

From November 2008 to June 2009 he was the curator of Galerie NoD in Prague. Since September 2009, he has been curator of Gallery NTK and the exhibition program of the National Technical Library in Prague, where he focuses mainly on large group shows exploring science and technology, architecture, and institutional criticism. He has prepared numerous exhibitions as an independent curator in the Czech Republic and abroad (Brno House of Arts; Prague House in Brussels, Belgium; Czech Centre in Berlin; Moravany nad Váhom Castle,Slovakia; Regional Gallery of Fine Arts in Zlín; GVU Náchod; and others).

Noemi Purkrábková is a media theorist, curator, and art writer living in Prague. She is a co-founder of the amorphous collective BCAAsystem, which stretches between experimental music and visual art. She is a PhD student in the Department of Film Studies at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University and works as an in-house editor for the magazine Art Antiques. She is one of the curators of the Prague gallery Holešovická Šachta and a member of the experimental curatorial platform Proto Gallery Systems.