Sculpture Connections was inspired by the end of a particular relationship and an important part of the artwork is watching the textile connections between the two figures break and decay. The sculpture is exhibited outside and after some time all of the connections and feelings (represented by those textile parts) will be lost and figures won´t be one but two lonely figures.  


Connections

Kiddos

The primary visual reference for this ensemble was Jindřich Štýrský's drawing "The  dream about tattooed babies".

The series is capturing a certain symbolic end to childhood, sobering up from the belief that goodness and love prevail.  The symbolic death of an inner child.
"Tattoos" are my drawings and journal entries, representing internal shouts that at least in this way got to the surface.

And another feature that is characteristic of me so far is my work with textiles.
I especially like to work with textiles with the past, worn and used textiles with a history. I like to imagine that textile with history preserves what happened.



Kiddo I-V

Love is Blindness  is part of 2018 series of work named Alone Together, which revolved around relationships and connections we have between each other. Visual inspiration was Magritte's painting Lovers.

Love is Blindness

Mae is part of the series where I reinterpret the classical depiction of saints and religious motifs in my own sculptural language while trying to artistically process  own faith in art as a discipline.

Solitude as a unique state of an individual, duality, depending on the situation, can have both positive and negative effects. Positive effects can range anywhere from greater freedom to greater spirituality, while negative effects are socially depressing and can cause mental illness.


Solitude

Fragile

Deformation
2015
rubber, leather, metal
167 x 60 x 80 cm


Deformation

Wolf Girl
2019
metal, epoxy resin, synthetic fiber
265 x 250 x 75 cm

Artwork from my sculptural project, inspired by the classic fairy tales, influenced by gender inequality and gender roles that are still so very present in our everyday life. I am exploring individual wrong lessons fairy tales teach us about how women “should” behave, and I am playfully working with them through my art.   This one is named WOLF GIRL and for me personally this one is a key artwork. Influenced by the Little Red Riding Hood, specifically inspired by an early work of Kiki Smith, who has worked extensively with this fairy tale and theme. Her paper sculpture from 1999 named Daughter, shows a girl in a red cloak with her face is covered with hair. When mixing Red Riding Hood with the wolf, Smith draws attention to the relationship between humans and animals, good and evil, and especially men and women. Smith often worked with an idea that a wolf and a girl don't have to be in conflict with each other and that they are more similar than expected. My hairy Little Riding Hood is conscious of the inner masculine part of her personality (her Animus), she is not ashamed and does not try to suppress that part of her. I named my sculpture Wolf Girl and represents for me the ideal woman, one who is in harmony with the male part of her personality.
I am also referring to Feral Children (Wolf Children/Vlčí děti- is a term used in the Czech Republic) / growing up without any contact with human society. We are all born into a certain environment, we accept its norms and opinions, we mostly follow them blindly without thinking deeper about them and they can create personal imaginary prisons in my opinion. A wolf/feral woman who is not burdened with social and gender roles is a woman who is completely free, someone I aspire to be myself one day.


Wolf Girl

These two sculptures are a part of a larger sculptural project, inspired by the classic fairy tales, it is a bigger series that is influenced by gender inequality and gender roles that are still so very present in our everyday life. This one is inspired by the fact that women are constantly pitted against each other and use an example of this behavior in a fairy tale about “Cinderella” and her stepsisters. Not just fairy tales are full of bad examples of relationships between women. Stories and articles about women who hate other women. The media revel in encouraging them to be jealous and envious. Possibly just to weaken the female part of society. At the same time, it saddens me and makes me ask myself a question why do women — enough of them — support patriarchy, the very system that oppresses them?  Logically, we would be stronger if we were pulling together and rejoicing in the success of others. For me, a good example of this phenomenon is the fairy tale about Cinderella and her step-sisters and step-mother. The fact that only women appear as negative characters in the story is logical, but still a sad reality.  I tried to capture my own feeling about this issue with my sculptures of two female bodies facing each other. One of them represents the negative example of female relationships. Figures are facing each other and threaten each other with rusty nails between them.  The other one represents my personal"fixed" version of the female relationship. Their bodies sit opposite each other on half-cut off chairs. Individual figures hold each other on their backs and the inner part of the figures is made of soft plush textiles. That represents cooperation, one would fall without the other. Together they are stronger.



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Nikola Emma Ryšavá

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