AFTERLAND / deprivating zone

The studio of Fine Arts 1 cordially invites you to the final exhibition of the summer semester 2025!

Behind the City Gallery Pardubice (Gampa), there is a plot of land – an abandoned space where a large pile of soil (full of fragments from other buildings, waste and stones) was brought in during the construction of the gallery. It is a longitudinal embankment - a mound - which originally occupied more than a half of this land. However, within the framework of Kateřina Konvalina's concept and thanks to the semester-long collaboration with Gampa, we turned this brownfield into a garden and named it "VALERIA/ AFTERLANDS".  As such, we addressed the question of how we can relate from an artistic and civic position to similar types of (in)places, such as brownfields, and the potential of public spaces for interspecies encounters or community gardening. That was through the fieldwork itself, but also through lectures and seminars by invited guests.

In addition to the garden, students of VU1 also participated in the creation of several site-specific objects and performances conceived specifically for the mound. With the vision that even this type of "waste" and artificially piled soil can find a new functional life, the name "Valerie" (valens - "strong" - Valérie - "something valid") was adopted for this part. Its originally depressing state is now, after several weeks of care, really bursting with new life; whether thanks to the settled (infested) plants or the embedded projects of VU1 students and other collaborators.

All of the above is formally linked to the Artsemester exhibition, especially through spatial intervention. In its shape it is related to Valeria from Pardubice, however, more than the physical volume of the soil we were inspired by its immaterial and mental processes: we are interested in how the layers of realities of ancient as well as recent history rearrange, encompass and enable or disable us to see the reality behind our normalized world. Just as Pardubice's mound is mostly made of clay, Prague's is naturally created from things available in the school including residues from the current reconstruction works. The useless and possibly contaminated soil is thus replaced in the exhibition by waste materials, tools and fragments of artworks that have outlived their so-called normal life. 

The depressing zone that you see in the studio now is a continuation of the real Pardubice brownfield but also a reflection of our own fieldworks ("about", "on" and "for"). Its structure is accessible and allows you to stay, see the exhibited works from above, from a different perspective, sit and rest on the top of it. Like a real brownfield, it is a shared space for emergent plants and a place for diverse interaction.

The depressing zone also briefly, during the Artsemester, replaces the missing garden of the UMPRUM building on Jan Palach square. At the same time, it thematizes the state of the environment in which we find ourselves, and reflects on the potential of the destruction of the school building in terms of the renewal of thoughts, ideas, attitudes... 

Last but not least, it also highlights our own deprivation from the land grabbing and exploitation of its human and more-than-human inhabitants, which is currently taking place on multiple levels. Nevertheless, we see hope in the collaboration, cultivation and common need to care for the seemingly "dead and depressing". We want to cultivate resistance and resilience on the ruins of colonized land. In the same way that the Wolf Poppies in Palestine teach us to resist. 

 ! Please pay extra attention to your safety when moving on the installation (mound); movement is limited to the routes marked by the tracks, thank you!

AFTERLAND / deprivating zone

5 June - 10 June 2025, studio of Fine Arts I (004)

Artists: Anna Solianyk, Barbora Tetaurová, Bianka Barniaková, Daniela Večerková, Ella McKinney, Florian Synák, Júlia Guerola Maurí, Karolína Kopřivová, Klára Polajnar, Kristina Aneška, Kristýna Canelanisipeanu, Lukáš Smatana, Michaela Jamborová, Niels Erhardsen, Petra Bruhová, Ruta Richter, Yanina Arlová a Zuzana Kotrbová. 

concept (text, installation): Amálie Bulandrová and Dominik Lang in collaboration with students of the studio.

Accompanying programme:
- 4.6.2025, 19:00 TCM courtyard: Ruta Richter Pu: May You Be Among the Survivors.
- 4.6. 2025, 19:30 studio 004: Anna Solianyk: do they remember the way home?
- 4.6.2025, 20:15 studio 004: Niels Erhardsen: How to make your own clay
- 6.6.2025, 10:00 - 18:00 studio 004: Kristina Aneška: We will drink cacao and be nice to each other.
- 8.6.2025, 16:00 studio 004: Yanina Arlová & Michaela Čajkovičová: Chost Chariging

Credits: Kateřina Žák Konvalina, Vojtěch Novák (Gampa), Jiří Žák, Edith Jeřábková and Václav Girs (LES), Miriam Pružincová, Jan Haubelt, Jonáš Richter, Ruta Richter, Anna Solyanik, Lukas Smatan, Florian Synák, Niels Erhardsen, Kristina Anežka Hlavinková, Daniela Večerková and all others.