Jana Želibská (b. 1941, Olomouc) addresses, in this solo exhibition, a world marked by destabilisation, the weakening of cultural institutions, and a politics of incompetence and blindness toward art and science. Since the 1960s, she has continuously developed art and feminist strategies of resistance to oppression and, through her unmistakable artistic language, creates a symbolically and affectively layered environment. Central to the installation is the artist’s long-cherished plaster copy of the marble bust of Cecilia Gonzaga, whose forcible removal from Levoča interrupted independent art-historical research and exposed the vulnerability of cultural memory. The question “Where is my sister?” articulates sisterhood as a form of solidarity and resistance against isolation and manipulation. The interconnected installation unfolds throughout the gallery space, working with hope and despair as two affective poles of a shared reality. It reminds us that hope is neither escape nor illusion, but a conscious and active method of survival.

Lucia Gregorová Stach

Jana Želibská (1941, Olomouc, Czechoslovakia), visual artist living and working in Bratislava, play a key role on Slovak artistic scene from the end of the Sixties. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava and she started her artistic and exhibition career in 1967 with the exhibition Možnosť odkrývania (Possibility of uncovering) at Gallery of Cyprián Majerník in Bratislava. During the following year she spent several months in a residency program in Paris, but she returned back to already occupied Czechoslovakia. Despite this fact, her exhibition activity was and still continues to be very rich. Her work was exhibited in many Slovak, as well as foreign institutions: Tate Modern (London), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Ludwig Muzeum (Budapest), Zacheta – Narodowa Galeria Sztuky (Warsaw), Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig (Vienna), Gosudarstvennyj centre sovremennovo iskusstva (Moscow), Space Apollonia (Strasbourg), Muzeul National de Arta Contemporana (Bucharest), Centre tchèque (Paris), Embassy of the Slovak Republic (Washington D. C.), Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Wörlen (Passau), Národní galerie v Praze (Prague), XLVIII. Biennale di Venezia, Czechoslovak pavilion, Giardini di Castello (Venice), Courtyard Gallery (New York), Musée d´Art Moderne de la ville de Paris (Paris), Museo Universitario (Mexico) and others.