Jana Hojstričová: Extreme invasions and irreversible extinctions

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Where:

• Station Contemporary Art Gallery

  • Ul. Gustáva Mallého 2, Bratislava

When:

• Opening: May 29, 2024 at 6 p.m. CET

  • Duration: 30.5. – 4.7.2024

 

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Curator:

• Naďa Kančevová

 

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Curator's text for the exhibition:

Jana Hojstričová is a photographer who has been attracted to the world of museum storage for a long time. Inspired by educational albums of the 19th century, she gradually creates her own "museum collection" of photographs (her own and appropriated) capturing fragments of nature and history that museums carefully protect from oblivion. However, her current exhibition Extreme Invasions and Irreversible Extinction suggests that although we try to protect and preserve nature, we ourselves are part of the processes that devastate and change it. At the same time, it touches on the transience of ourselves and the transience of museums, which are also subject to changes and degradation.

The subject of the photographs presented at the exhibition are vulnerable endangered species (stuffed mammals wrapped in translucent foil, specimens of extinct plants, fish preserved in formaldehyde, etc.), but also spaces in which these objects are scientifically categorized. At first glance, objectively systematized photos, laid out on "laboratory tables" are supposed to evoke an institutional space and at the same time a place of "excavations". In the "archaeological sense", the objects and systems documented in these photographs appear as a remnant of the past, which already demands a new interpretation. Their staging in the manner of quasi-laboratory samples underlines the "museum character" of the entire project - it uses photography's ability to extract, accumulate and archive a certain type of motif and create evidence of its expansion.

However, the presented "albums" of Jana Hojstričová do not actually have a primary scientific, historical or serial function, but rather acquire an emotional, commemorative value. Photography, by its very nature - more than any other (collectible) object - seems to stand somewhere on the border between matter and experience, as if it connects these two very distant worlds. Freezing time with a camera is both a material and a memory, it is physical and fleeting. In this sense, the presented photos can also be perceived as a memory trace - a visual reminder of the world that was valid until recently and is now relativized.

Naďa Kančevová

 

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Jana Hojstričová

has been active on the Slovak art scene since the end of the 90s of the 20th century. In the beginning, her work was dedicated to the subjective depiction of human intimacy, mostly women, later it was anchored in a sociological understanding of work, she was interested in the position of women in the family and society. Among her distinctive projects was a set of photographs of her own family, which she recorded in an objective and non-subjective way. Through researching historical photographic techniques, her attention gradually began to turn towards natural sciences, museum culture and experimentation with photographic techniques. In recent years, he has been collaborating as an author duo with glass artist Palo Mach. In this field, they managed to realize several successful attempts in the field of applying photography to glass, their joint work was presented at several international exhibitions. They published their previous collaboration last year in the book EXPERIMENTATION AND REVERSIBILITY.

 

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• Supported by public funds from Slovak arts council
• Partner of the project is TERRA CULTA o. z.