Zuzana Stefkova's Curator Talk

Zuzana Stefkova is a curator at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Prague, Czech Republic. Her talk spanned many artists from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, a region in Eastern Europe with recent history involving struggles with communism, democracy, and westernization. By the end of her discussion, it was clear that Czech political art has much in common with its Western counterparts. The recent change in leadership caused a rapid artistic evolution, but it still suffers from setbacks common to all political art.
She heavily discussed the works of David Cerny, the artist responsible for the Keith Haring-like babies climbing the television tower in Zizkov and the pinkness of the formerly oppressive Russian tank monument. His sculptural works have an air of mischief about them, somewhere between activism and vandalism, a balance with which many activist artists struggle. His work raises questions of boundaries of artwork in general, but also the efficiency of conveying political messages through artwork. A threat of offensive and illegal activity tends to inspire censorship, which has been a problem in Stefkova’s recent exhibits.
Politik-um explored sensitive issues in Central Europe, including propaganda and political acts. This exhibition in Prague castle (the seat of Czech government) included several controversial pieces, including Zimmer Frei!, a demonstration taking over abandoned housing, laced with anti-German sentiment. Because of proximity to the head of state, this exhibit was prematurely closed to avoid associating the nation with offensive anti-German attitudes.
The next exhibit entitled Czechpoint was denied access to the national galleries for fear of unfortunate consequences due to similar content. This second exhibit aimed to blur the definitions between art and politics, audience and activist. Where Politik-um emphasized the helplessness of art to affect change in its society, Czechpoint empowered the viewer and offered a forum for art to make political change. Of course, this was done in a set of small, obscure galleries and not the Prague Castle. Perhaps this is fitting though, that change made to the system cannot come from the system itself, it must originate in the outskirts. Limited accessibility is a small hurdle if the message conveyed can be more potent. Still, to limit the audience to essentially people who have already been convinced of the urgency of the political messages seems somewhat sad; those who need to be exposed to this new point of view may have ventured to a national gallery, but to wander into an exhibit like Czechpoint would be unlikely.
The majority of the rest of Stefkova’s discussion focused on specific individual pieces as examples of challenging the current political state in different ways. The ubiquity of “artist groups”, that is, artists producing work semi-anonymously in troupes, was surprising as she revealed piece after piece by groups Guma Guar, Pode Bal, Rafani, and Ztohoven. In Czech art, parallels to American political art are astounding, and similar hurdles must be overcome. Exploring art outside of our own society, especially in an emerging Western culture, reveals an understanding about how we process information about our own culture.