Laura Bradová – Not Every Face Belongs to a Human

Gallery Nedbalka, Nedbalova 17, Bratislava

Laura Bradová (2000) is a master’s student at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, in the Studio of Free Printmaking. She completed her bachelor’s studies at the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica, and study stays at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków and Tokyo University of the Arts have shaped her relationship to tradition while opening new ways of thinking about the image. She works with drawing, printmaking, and painting, perceiving classical techniques as an irreplaceable value in a time when it is easier to rely on digital methods.

The exhibition Not Every Face Belongs to a Human emerged from the need to draw without a plan or expectations. The first drawings, created on a long roll of paper, functioned as a visual diary, from which later grew lithographs—not as copies, but as transformations where something is lost and something new is revealed. The faces in her works are not portraits of people but imprints of feelings and dreams that surface and disappear. Sometimes they resemble animals; at other times, nameless forms—symbols of what is wild, untamed, protective, and unsettling within us. The memory of the animal appears precisely when we think we already know who we are. The animals in her works mirror people—familiar yet difficult to read. And no matter how hard we try, we can never fully understand them.

In her drawing and classical printmaking, the artist focuses on material and process—dense hatching, layered lines, and traces of the hand’s movement. Her images do not directly depict faces or figures; instead, they capture moods, emotions, and fragments that surface during creation. The exhibition brings together drawings from her master’s studies executed in lithography, revealing the journey from the initial sketch to the print and the gradual development of the artist’s visual language.