co-exhibition with Radka Bodzewic
The first of the Accessibility Note exhibitions curated by Magdalena J. Hartelova opened a loose series of site specific projects presenting socially engaged art and institutional critique. The Stove Meetings addressed motherhood, a topic that is, in academic circles, still frequently relegated to a corner. The main question the artists ask is quite universal: Where should we turn when the institutions and places that should provide critique and representation fail us? This is an attempt to hack the system and to change the exhibition space into an experimental kitchen where we can eat, meet and work at the same time.
The project follows on from artists belonging to feminist institutional critique and conceptual art such as Mierle Laderman Ukeles and Mary Kelly, in which artists used the status of art and art space to subvert the current capitalist patriarchal system that devalues certain types of work, traditionally as female. Just like the early feminist art mentioned above, Chmelíková and Doubravová are neither distressed nor angry. Their project for Accessibility Notes is a celebration of the vitality of communities and places that grow like grass through concrete in the least expected places – under the kitchen table, by the stove, on Messenger, between breastfeedings.
Gallery of Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, 2018