[Janeil Engelstad] In ‘Voices From the Center’, an exhibition at Chicago gallery threewalls, emerging artists who came of age after the fall of the Berlin Wall reflect on communist and post-communist life, with wit and humor all their own.
A life-size wooden, hand-made model of Czech car Skoda 100MB was crafted by Slovak multi-media artist Oto Hudec for the exhibition in Chicago’s threewalls gallery entitled ‘Voices From the Center’. Hudec’s wooden piece ’100 small hurts’ was inspired by a photo of his father, aunt, and grandmother having lunch in front of their car while on vacation in the former Yugoslavia. The title relates to the model number of his grandfather’s Czech car, a Skoda 100 MB where ‘MB’ referenced the city of Mlada Boleslav where the cars were made. In jest people would say that MB meant ‘Malych Bolesti’, which translates in English to ‘small hurts’, joking about the number of repairs that an owner had to sometimes make to the car. Hudec used the Skoda, as well as interviews of family members and watercolors that depicted their memories of the time, as a lens to examine the quality of life for a middle class family during communism in the former Czechoslovakia.
exhibition 'Voices From the Center', gallery view / photo: Clare Britt
'Life and Culture of a Foreign Speaking Region' (2011) on left, by Magda Stanova / photo: Clare Britt
The distinctiveness of Central European humor is a subject of Magda Stanova’s (a Prague-based artist) work. For the threewalls exhibition, Stanova created two site-specific, large scale wall drawings that dissected language, official documents, newspapers and the nuances of humor from the communist era. Entitled ‘Life and Culture of a Foreign Speaking Region’, Stanova wrote a selection of jokes on the walls of the gallery along with their schematic explanation. The jokes came from two different points of view: those jokes that expressed the essence of the communist system as viewed by the people who lived inside of it; and those that commented on the fact that many Central Europeans imagined the other side of the Berlin Wall as a paradise.
Reflecting on the use of public places to gather, commune and protest during communism, and most recently in the Middle Eastand on Wall Street, another Slovak artist Matej Vakula explored the politics of site. Using audio excerpts from his interviews with people in Central Europe and the United States, Vakula has created a sound piece ‘A Manual for Public Space’ that examines people’s perceptions and experiences of public space.
'Weekend Houses', Miklos Suranyi / courtesy threewalls gallery Chicago
'The Garage Project' (2010), by Technica Schweiz (Gergely Laszlo, Peter Rakosi) / photo: Clare Britt
The exhibition, which further showcased works of Hungarian photographers Miklos Suranyi and Technica Schweiz, and Polish graphic design firm Grafixpol, was a narrow but insightful view of the cultural phenomenon of Central Europe. It provided a portrait of people emerging from one political and cultural era into another. A wider picture of Central Europe – of people who lived much of their life during communism and those born just before or after the fall of the communist wall – was the subject of my research as a Fullbright Scholar in Slovakia.
While teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava in 2006, I began having conversations with people about their experiences during communism and how their lives had changed since the revolution of 1989. I was interested in understanding what people experienced on the other side of the Berlin Wall. As it turned out, the personal and poignant conversations were the beginnings of an extensive oral history project, housed on the interactive web site www.voicesfromthecenter.net. I invite you to explore the lives and values of people from the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland; what hopes and dreams they have for themselves, their countries and the world.
from the oral history project 'Voices From the Center', by Janeil Engelstad
[Podcast at ARTMargins Online: interview with Janeil and the artists featured in the exhibition. Listen here.]
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Janeil Engelstad is an artist, curator, educator and producer of exhibitions and multiform projects throughout the world, addressing concerns such as youth and gang violence, homelessness, peace, and ecology. Exhibited internationally, Janeil’s work has also been featured in media outlets, such as Art News, Metropolis, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, NBC Nightly News, and NBC Today Show. She has an MFA in Photography and BAs in Political Science and English.
Janeil’s websites: www.janeilengelstad.net and www.makeartwithpurpose.net
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Filed under: Art, Prague, World Tagged: | Art, Communist, life size model, Review, skoda 100, Slovak
