27. 2. – 28. 3. 2026
Opening: 26th of February, 2026 at 6:00 PM
UM Gallery, UMPRUM Technology Center, Mikulandská 134/5, Prague 1
Curator-Led Tours:
3rd of March 2026 at 6:00 PM
28th of March 2026 at 4:00 PM
The new exhibition Biopersistence at UM Gallery explores the boundaries between life and death, pausing to reflect on the desire for immortality and the inevitability of finitude. Through works by Czech and international women artists, it examines the need to (sur)vive under conditions of constant pressure to optimize the body and mind.
Curators Agáta Hošnová and Karolína Voleská, in their project, reflect on the contemporary disappearance of finitude from society’s consciousness and on attempts to control it. It is not only the development of medicine and the pharmaceutical industry—reflected in rising average life expectancy and quality of life—but above all the broader trends shaping society and its values. Death is increasingly viewed as a technical problem rather than as a part of life and an inevitable fate. This shift opens up new ethical dilemmas. The exhibition Biopersistence reveals how notions of the body, consciousness, and finitude are changing in an era when life itself becomes an investment project—intensifying the question of who has the right to access it.
“Through this exhibition project, we sought to approach and reflect sensitively on the fact that finitude is one of the few bonds shared across all living organisms. However, the aim of Biopersistence was not to shock with a delicate subject matter, but rather to explore the wide range of ways in which death is reflected in contemporary visual art. We therefore worked with more subtle suggestions that can be associated with death — medical aesthetics, alternative spirituality, natural cycles, or the visual language of memorial plaques,” comment the exhibition’s curators, Agáta Hošnová and Karolína Voleská, graduates of the Theory and History of Modern and Contemporary Art program at UMPRUM.
These ideas take material form in the works of seven selected women artists. Although each expresses herself through a different medium and addresses distinct questions, their works together offer a complex and multilayered statement. The sculpture by Marie Holá, a graduate of Studio of Fine Art IV at UMPRUM, draws attention to the body condemned to relentless productivity and controlled by the oversized apparatus of biopower. The series of works by Kristina Láníková, a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, points to the accessibility of care as determined by social and economic conditions. Treatment is also addressed in the object by Natálie Sýkorová, a graduate of Studio of Fine Art III, in which she combines technicist sterility with healing practices and spirituality. Large-scale paintings by the Hungarian-German artist Galamb Thorday, who lives in Leipzig, open a debate on the tendency of the commercial market to appropriate traditional knowledge and spiritual experience. The grouping of metal carnivorous plants by the Romanian artist Nona Inescu, who lives in Athens, highlights the illusion that biological processes are under our control. Through marble objects reminiscent of tombstones, Bianka Barniaková, a student of Studio of Fine Art I, engages with mourning and memory. The theme of memento mori and the aesthetics of long-past eras permeate the black-and-white analogue photographs of Tereza Zelenková, who studied and now lives in London.
The exhibition features an installation by Adam Rýznar and Sofie Gjuričová, students of the Studio of Architecture II at UMPRUM, which both anchors and amplifies the themes of the show. The exhibition is framed by a semi-transparent, light-permeable wall made of old-rose tulle fabric, evoking a sense of illusory safety.
Biopersistence offers a space for reflection on a future in which surviving means redefining what it means to be alive.
