Love, Bread and Other Duties - curatorial text

7.3. – 1.5.2025

Artists: Lucia Dovičáková, Vladimíra Hradecká, Zuzana Husárová, Zuzana Svatik, Ivana Šáteková, Linda Olejárová

Curator: Zuzana Pacáková

Photoreport from exhibition here

The exhibition Love, Bread, and Other Duties presents a selection of works by five visual artists who have long explored themes of the female world in all its nuances, concerns, struggles, desires, and joys, situating them within a broader cultural and social context. What role does personal memory play in collective identity? How does women's experience resonate in cultural and historical memory? Through various artistic media and approaches, the exhibition raises questions about female experience—both intimate and public, personal and collective—offering diverse perspectives on the perception of women in today's world.

 Lucia Dovičáková, in her figurative paintings and drawings, explores intimate and everyday aspects of motherhood, home, and the female body. The exhibition showcases a selection of works filled with metaphors, dynamism, and irony. Lucia reveals not only the joys but also the challenges and complexities of women's emotional and physical experiences. Her expressive work materializes autobiographical stories with surreal elements that vividly illustrate, ironize, and hyperbolize situations of female daily life—motherhood, relationships, intimacy, and home.

 Zuzana Husárová, through experimental poetry and new media, deconstructs languages of power and gender stereotypes, creating a dialogue between literature, visual art, sound, and performance. Her poetic texts emphasize the sonic and visual layers of language, carrying strong socio-critical and feminist undertones. They reflect an intimate view of a world where everything is interconnected, interwoven, influenced, inspired, and resonating. The video installation Leaves (Beets), created in collaboration with Vladimíra Hradecká, presents a feminist perspective of motherhood, linking the desire for a better world with an enumeration of ecological consequences of destructive behavior and authoritative political positions.

 Vladimíra Hradecká explores the relationship between material, body, and space, investigating vulnerability and strength, transience and permanence. Her works hover between tactile experience and conceptual depth, reflecting both personal and collective experiences of femininity. The internal voice of her video art examines the connection between the body and space, nature and identity. Landscape is not just a backdrop—it is an integral part of ourselves.

 Zuzana Svatik presents an expressive pink fountain titled Various Peeing Methods, rich in references and symbols from the history of art and architecture. Her work merges traditional craftsmanship with feminist critique of taboo aspects of corporeality, gender stereotypes, and sexuality. She engages with the phenomenon of the body and its representation in art. By combining traditional craft techniques with provocative content, her sculptures and objects disrupt the conventional perception of ceramics as a decorative medium, humorously reflecting on gender issues and challenging societal norms.

Ivana Šáteková, in a distinctive combination of illustration, painting, and embroidery, reinterprets folklore and historical motifs in the context of contemporary gender stereotypes, satirizing their dogmatism and impact on daily life. Her work blends humor, satire, and visual storytelling, exposing the absurdities of gender norms and nationalist narratives. The exhibited series Festive Pretense addresses topics such as chauvinism, sexism, misogyny, and other so-called "traditional values," transforming them into miniature embroidered stories collected from various Slovak households.

 Although each artist employs a different material and conceptual language, their works collectively reflect broader questions of gender, cultural memory, gender norms, and corporeality in relation to power and historical narratives. By making the female perspective visible, they transcend individual expression and create a space for shared critical reflection.

 Through painting, textiles, ceramics, literary experiments, and intermedia forms, the exhibition provides a comprehensive view of the complexity of female identity and its transformations across different dimensions of cultural and historical reality. Love, Bread, and Other Duties is not merely a collection of individual statements by the artists but a dynamic discussion on the forms, norms, and meanings of female experience in both historical and contemporary contexts.

 Text: Zuzana Pacáková

 The exhibition Love, Bread, and Other Duties is part of the project Rooted in Trenčín, which is included in Trenčín 2026. Trenčín 2026 is financially supported by the City of Trenčín, the Trenčín Self-Governing Region, and the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic. The project’s partner is the European Union.