Asking the Fish (In the Body of a Fish out of Water)
>> at the Museum of Romans Suta andAleksandra Beļcova
Eva Koťátková’s surrealism-inspired work addresses and re-stages the modernity machine in sculpture, performance and text, highlighting its social, institutional and physical mechanisms. She asks why we often take rules and restrictions for granted and let them shape how we think, learn, move, behave and create.
For the re-staging, she desires to activate groups or individuals that are for various reasons excluded, discriminated, or silenced. Koťátková’s contribution to the 12th Survival Kit, a mermaid costume to be filled, is part of a larger series titled Machine for Restoring Empathy, a room- sized installation that originally hosted a sewing and storytelling workshop.
Through the colourful universe of this series which acts as a kind of living organism, the artist highlights the power of empathy to have a lucid presence and agency in our world to build a better life for ourselves and all species. The work provides a room to share and a space to protest for anyone or any being that either lacks something, or feels incomplete, broken or wounded.