Natália Sýkorová, a graduate and now researcher at UMPRUM, received the Bildrecht SOLO Award 2025 at viennacontemporary, the international fair for contemporary art in Austria. At the fair, she presented her work from the past two years under the umbrella title Begone Estrone.
Begone Estrone is a triptych of Natália’s latest projects, which together form a trajectory — not linear, but rhizomatic — tracing shifting relations between landscapes, bodies, and toxicities. It includes her diploma thesis and works created during her ongoing post-Mag program at UMPRUM: Echoes of Dryness Born of Clean Laws, Spillborne Tendril, and Femmecore Metabolite.
Echoes of Dryness Born of Clean Laws stages a speculative ecology of contamination and coexistence, employing layered symbolism, olfactory sensations, and the role of geranium not only in relation to women’s health. The hybrid performative interface installation Spillborne Tendril turns to the unruly and the permeable, framing contamination not only as toxicity but also as a form of contact. Femmecore Metabolite is a new body of work created in collaboration with artist Paula Gogola. At its core is an exploration of the bathroom, reimagined as a site of liminality that encapsulates the tension between sanctuary and profound vulnerability. Here, the bathroom becomes a stage for a tension-filled narrative where ritual, angels, estrogen injections, alchemy, urban decay, and their aesthetics become powerful symbols of broader societal issues, particularly those surrounding gender, identity, and the body.
Together, these works embody an evolving research into the intersections of ecology, technology, and embodiment. They map a trajectory from landscapes of control toward a speculative biopolitics of contamination and hormonal interference, employing estrangement as both method and aesthetic strategy. What emerges is not a survey but a landscape in flux: a body of work that materializes the contemporary condition of existence amid contamination, artificiality, and interdependence.
“The presentation of Natália Sýkorová within VUNU, Zone 1, features sculptural arrangements in a multisensory ensemble permeated with performative gestures. It breaks down infrastructural complexities and explores the element of water in its multifaceted contexts. Open containers, organic forms, extended prostheses, and the ambivalence between destruction and healing testify to the fragility of human existence in interplay with nature. At the same time, technical fragments are infused with new life through abstraction from their original function. By awarding the prize to VUNU, the jury of the viennacontemporary | Bildrecht SOLO Award also emphasizes the importance of the Bratislava gallery scene and acknowledges the gallery’s new presence on Florianigasse in Vienna.”
This was the jury’s statement on Sýkorová’s exhibition, which earned her the Bildrecht SOLO Award 2025 for an outstanding solo presentation.
