Kateřina Olivová: Your Relationship to Eternity
We cordially invite you to the opening of Kateřina Olivová’s exhibition, accompanied by a performance. Curated by Maja Štefančíková.
Where?
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Gallery Sumec
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School of Design, Ivanská cesta 21, Bratislava.
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MAP: You can find Gallery Sumec here: https://bitly.cx/R7Ps
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When?
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Opening & Performance: Monday, April 14, 2025, 6:00 PM
- Opening for School of Design students – 12:00 PM
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Exhibition duration: April 14 – May 16, 2025
Annotation
In the exhibition *Your Relationship to Eternity*, Kateřina Olivová explores the relationship between trauma and the body. She focuses particularly on how trauma is stored in bodily memory—including its biological aspects—and how we can consciously work with this process.
Contemporary somatic and neurobiological approaches understand trauma as something that gets "stuck" in the nervous system and manifests as chronic tension, disconnection, a sense of threat, or an inability to fully live in the present. That’s why working with the body is crucial in the healing process—the body is not just a passive bearer of trauma, but also an active tool for its processing.
The artist searches for ways to bring this complex topic into awareness through embodied experience—in ways that are safe, functional, and respectful of the individual’s autonomy. Central to her approach is trust in the wisdom of the body, its capacity for self-healing, and its natural ability to release accumulated emotions and experiences.
The exhibition explores the body as a source of regeneration and asks how we can make it a space where we feel good—how to make it a place of being that supports wholeness, well-being, and freedom, and how to find a meaningful relationship to oneself, to others, and perhaps even to eternity.
Kateřina Olivová
Kateřina Olivová is an artist, university teacher, researcher, feminist, mother, rainbow pony, and hippo fairy. In her work she focuses on performance, exploring embodiment, nudity, emotions—especially joy—and how they are experienced, processed, and shared through art, dreams, and desires. She enjoys working with her large soft naked body, glitter, smoke, or animal masks. She studied Body Design at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Brno University of Technology, where she also received her doctorate. She explores motherhood through activism (Nursing Guerilla) and through the Mothers Artlovers platform, which she co-founded with Darina Alster, including the publication *Milk and Honey*. Together with Darina Alster, she leads the Studio of New Media 2 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.
The 2025 exhibition program of Gallery Sumec is supported by the Slovak Arts Council from public funds. The Arts Council is the main partner of the project.