Multimedia artist Eva Koťátková at her painting exhibition entitled Unsigned in the gallery of the Austrian Cultural Forum on November 24, 2011.
Prague – For the Czech participation in the Art Biennale in Venice, an expert jury selected a project from 20 proposals called The heart of a captive giraffe is twelve kilograms lighter. Curator Hana Janečková and artist Himali Son Soin, collective Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures, will collaborate with author Eva Koťátková on the installation. The kitten theme for the biennale examines Czechoslovak history from contemporary ecological and decolonial perspectives based on the story of a real giraffe named Lenka. Zuzana Vlčková, spokeswoman for the National Gallery Prague, which ensures the Czech participation in the Venice Biennale, told ČTK.
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The international contemporary art show will be held from April 20 to November 24, 2024. The main curator is Adriano Pedrosa from Brazil. “The perspective on the import of animals from the countries of the Global South comes to life in the project through imagination and storytelling as ways of thinking about the relationship with the natural world,” Vlčková said about the winning project.
The nine-member jury evaluated the chosen topic as very current and resonant in the context of the biennial as a whole. “The exhibition works with topics discussed on the current international scene, which are, however, firmly anchored in the Czech local context, and which are communicated to the visitor in an understandable language. We expect that the presented topic will resonate on the global scene,” stated the jury, which also praised the experience of the author team with international projects.
The heart of a captive giraffe is twelve kilograms lighter and fits into the published theme of the upcoming biennial: Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere. The show will focus on different feelings and positions of otherness. The motto is derived from an activist group that fought against racism and xenophobia around 2000 in Turin, Italy.
The project will take place with the financial participation of the European Union through the program of the National Recovery Plan and the Ministry of Culture. The multimedia artist Koťátková will return to Venice after 11 years, when in 2013 she presented in the main pavilion in the Asylum project.
For the Biennale of Fine Arts in Venice, which alternates with the Biennale of Architecture in the Italian city, the Czech side for the last time in 2019, she selected the work of Stanislav Kolíbal. The Biennale of Fine Arts was held in Venice for the first time in 1885, it was always in an odd year, and later the Biennale of Architecture was added in every even year. The Venice Biennale was also affected by the covid-19 pandemic, it was canceled three years ago, and the shows were thus moved.
