My Shoes, Your Shoes

Kamila Ženatá invited eight female artists and their daughters to engage in an intergenerational dialogue that explores the emotional legacy of their families. A.1 HYB4 Gallery has been transformed into a flat divided into several rooms – and in each of them a story unfolds, created by the “family line-up” of artists. There are records of memories, maps of the landscape of consciousness and the unconscious, abstracts of emotions and dreams, elaborations of family narratives and themes handed down from generation to generation by women: grandmothers, mothers, daughters, granddaughters…

Events, occurrences, recollections of the past and emotions form the memory of a family, creating a social and emotional map that permeates across generations; they are the sediment in the layers of our lives. Trauma causes wounds that manifest as conflicting and destructive forces. Dialogue and communication, along with what can be described as conscious work with the subject, are tools that have the power to transform the energy of families and reconfigure the inherited patterns. While trauma may disconnect individuals and societies, it also has a tremendous potential to connect. The exhibition My Shoes, Your Shoes is, in a sense, a reconciliation ritual. It is performed by all the women who participate in the exhibition.

Artists: Daniela Baráčková, Karla Ema Nováková, Božena Baráčková, Tereza Marečková, Zora Marečková, Viola Marečková, Lucie Nováčková, Žofie Jarkovská, Jana Preková, Lilian Rullerová, Zuzana Růžičková, Alice Probstová, Olga Stehlíková, Rosaria Viola Mlčková, Denisa Václavová, Emma Kintera, Maya Kintera, Kateřina Závodová, Viola Závodová, Kamila Ženatá, Tereza Bečičková, Alena Bečičková