In November of this year, we will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain (in former Czechoslovakia known as the Velvet Revolution), whose primary contribution to society is freedom. On this occasion, Nitra Gallery in cooperation with the Divadelná Nitra Association will host an international exhibition of contemporary visual art. It will share the theme with the 28th International Theatre Festival Divadelná Nitra (ITF DN): The Faces of Freedom.
The project’s objective is to showcase how contemporary artists reflect upon the theme of freedom, or the lack of it. Freedom comes in various forms: freedom of the individual, society, speech, thought, religion, sexual orientation, movement, art, etc. How can we define, grasp, understand it? How do people from different countries perceive it? What does it mean to us? Do we need to fight for it? And how, by which means? What do we do when it is exploited? Where does the freedom of speech end in a world full of conspiracies, hoaxes and fake news? Today, freedom sometimes seems to resemble a jungle fight for survival rather than idealistic notions of peaceful and prosperous cohabitation, which can lead to nostalgic memories of the totalitarian golden cage in many of the post-socialist countries. What are the dangers of forgetting our past and the resulting relativism of undemocratic regimes?
Artworks which will be presented at the exhibition The Faces of Freedom will be selected from an international open call which accepts submissions from visual artists of the former Eastern Block (Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, eventually Albania and the region of the former East Germany), which was subjected to the Soviet Union in the period from the end of WWII until 1989. These countries and their people share similar experiences: the long-ruling authoritarian regime, the euphoric arrival of freedom in 1989 and the subsequent transformation period of the 1990s when many considered freedom superior to any and all laws…
Submission Deadline: 30 April 2019
SK: www.nitrianskagaleria.sk/
EN: www.nitrianskagaleria.sk/