Jana Kapelová: Unconditional work
Are you satisfied with working in culture? Have you considered leaving the artistic environment? Could you describe the change in your daily life during a pandemic? How did it affect the possibilities of your self-realization, work and other activities? Has it affected your current and non-current financial income?
Turčianska galéria in Martin
Daxnerova 2, Martin
The unconditional work is a current project of Jana Kapelová, which builds on her previous work Nylonové context (2017) devoted to subjective statements about the work experiences of women working in Slovakia in the field of contemporary art. As a result, the project reveals the personal experiences (with forms of work, specific work ethic, low financial evaluation, or precariousness) of respondents as a common collective experience of all workers (but also workers) in culture. Unconditional work also focuses on other aspects of women's professional and private life; also looks "behind" the work; for study, maternity, pension, pandemic. On how the form of education or the usual patterns of behavior condition and influence work life, but also personal life and mental experience. The above questions are just an example of a wider set of questions with which the author addressed the women participating in the project.
The exhibition in the Turčianská Gallery in Martin presents a thematic selection from an ongoing project. It focuses on the reflection of the current situation of the pandemic, how the changed conditions affect the work, financial situation, mental health or social relationships of the participating women of several generations.
Although the unconditional work is dedicated to the personal experience of women active in the field of art - artists, curators, university teachers, deposit managers, production, art historians and theorists, directors, gallery teachers - the experiences these women share anonymously are probably similar to those of others. areas. These are often "prefeminized" professions, where work is perceived as a service, a personal profession, with a low salary (education, health care, etc.). The approach to work here can in many ways resemble unconditional love, unconditional surrender to what makes sense and fulfills a person.
Text: Eliška Mazalanová