Czech artist Eva Kot’átková’s work addresses the social, institutional, and physical structures, rules, and constraints of everyday life that shape how we think, learn, move, and create. Her installation in the North Gallery invites visitors to observe a community meeting in a small Czech town debating the construction of a house for people with disabilities.
Based on documentary material and the artist’s own research, Interviews with the Monster (2021) examines mechanisms of discrimination and exclusion, the pressures of normativity, and the unfounded, inert fear that arises when confronted with what appears to be different and incomprehensible. The ‘monster’ in Kot’átková’s work is not ‘the other’ but rather an embodiment of learned anxieties and irrational fears.
Eva Kot’átková (1982, Prague) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague with a Master’s degree and obtained her PhD from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. She is the co-founder of the platform Institute of Anxiety, a space for collaboration between artists, theorists and activists that sees anxiety as a result of social, political, economic and ecological forces. It argues that there is a potential for positive change both in attempting structural changes and system critique but also in diverse acts of sharing.
Her work has been the focus of solo exhibitions held at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024) with the installation The heart of a giraffe in captivity is twelve kilos lighter, curated by Hana Janečková; Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2023); National Gallery Prague (2022–3); Kunsthalle Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2019); Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2018); MIT List Visual Art Center, Cambridge, MA (2015); Modern Art Oxford, UK (2013) among other venues. Koťátková has participated in documenta, Kassel (2022); the 16th Istanbul Biennial (2019), JIWA: the Jakarta Biennial (2017), Sonsbeek16, Arnheim, the Netherlands (2016); the New Museum’s Triennial, New York (2015), the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), the 18th Sydney Biennial (2012), and the 11th Biennale de Lyon (2011).
Partners and sponsors: Embassy of the Czech Republic, Hunt Kastner Gallery