Zuzana Štefková Lecture

I’m not a huge fan of political art in general (see previous post on Andrea Bowers), but somehow political art from other countries just seems more interesting. Perhaps it’s the realization that things abroad are generally worse than they are in the United States, where it seems artists are really pulling teeth to complain about the unfortunate lot of well-manicured women and welfare-bound families living under a poverty-line defined at a level higher than the median income of many European nations.
So at least Zuzana Štefková has the advantage of being one of the curators of the Center of Contemporary Arts in Prague. Her interest in developing shows about political art seems more justified, at least in the context of propaganda and political artistic statements in the Eastern Bloc.
Her talk focused more on the history of political art in the Czech Republic and identified important artists and shows in the last ten years. She pointed out that until as late as the late 1990s, political art remained fairly marginalized. In 2002, an exhibition curated by the Center for Contemporary arts titled ‘POLITIK-UM’ and displayed in the Prague Castle caused massive controversy when some of the work questioned the political regime at the time. A work titled ‘Pode Bal: Zimmer Frei’ (2002) especially caused political discomfort and caused both censorship and cancelation of some of the other works in the show. A common story, undoubtedly, but also one worth identifying in today’s perception of democracy and changing nations abroad.
Due to the debate accompanying ‘POLITIK-UM,’ a later show in 2006/2008 titled ‘CZECHPOINT’ premiered in obscure galleries across Prague. Štefková correctly identified that this in itself was a valiant political statement, and further identified how the two exhibits were fundamentally different. According to her analysis of the first show, the perception of political art was fundamentally more idealized, whereas the debate surrounding the second exhibition questioned the effectiveness of political art versus activism.
I mostly enjoyed her stories about the ways in which governments tend to overblow certain situations. When the two art students placed the fake bombs in the city, the over-reaction of the involved government hugely reminded me of the way that the Boston police force reacted to the led aliens distributed by the advertising agency for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force cartoon series. Although I don’t necessarily view this particular gesture as art, her description of the group that replaced the morning news with shots of nuclear explosions really questions the influence of the media in their distribution of information. Scannell actively discusses this in the article we read, and questions how viewers can be easily challenged and influenced by something as readily available and one-sided as radio and television.
Her work as a curator brings Štefková a unique perspective on how art is produced and sold in a gallery space, which lends itself interestingly to the production of political and activist art. Historically interesting and contemporarily relevant, the presentation she gave identified the role of such art abroad and in the global sphere.