The exhibition presents a new chapter of Ana de Almeida’s ongoing »Collective Archive« project (initiated in 2014), which explores the poetics and politics of the archive, and the dynamics of personal and collective remembrance.

Collaboration: Adam Balogh, Johanna Bukovsky, Viktoria Gajdošová, Barbora Halmešová, Jos Leys, Michaela Pavelková, Michaela Prablesková, Iida Saarela, Karla Šavrtková

Curated by Judit Angel

Opening: 30. September, 2025 at 18:00
Venue: tranzit.sk, Beskydská 12, Bratislava
Open: Tuesday – Friday: 14:30 – 18:30

At its core are photographs taken by the artist’s father, a Portuguese student in the former Czechoslovakia between 1978 and 1987. Shot without artistic ambition, the images carry the imprint of a political commitment shaped by Portugal’s Carnation Revolution (1974), which ended decades of dictatorship and colonial war. That revolutionary spirit extended into his experience of everyday life in socialist Czechoslovakia during the years leading up to the Velvet Revolution (1989).

By activating this material in sculptural and video installations, de Almeida invites reflection on how revolutionary euphoria is displaced, how memory and nostalgia are transmitted across generations, and how historical moments of social upheaval resonate in today’s climate of disillusionment, depoliticisation, and the resurgence of ultraconservative and far-right forces.

While institutional archives often rely on photography as indexical proof of the past, de Almeida resists this logic. Instead of preserving historical moments, her sculptural displays open spaces for contemplation, suspension, and the fugitive release of the political potential of the images they contain. Similarly, her video works, employing lip-reading and sign language, situate the semiotics of revolution in an ongoing process of translation. In this way, her understanding of the archive is relational and performative.

Alongside a new sculptural work created specifically for tranzit.sk’s study room, the exhibition also presents the results of a workshop with young Bratislava-based artists who engaged with their own photographic archives. Their collective project identifies moments of resistance and explores the connections between domestic, institutional, private, and collective realms.

Ana de Almeida is an interdisciplinary artist from Lisbon, now based in Vienna. She works with archives and processes of remembering from a socio-political perspective. Her practice engages with the intersection of family narratives and macro-political events, as well as the commodification of history. Currently, de Almeida is pursuing her doctorate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, focusing on the production of images and their ideological implications in the 1974–1989 inter-revolutionary space between the Carnation and Velvet Revolutions.

Her work has been exhibited at Camera Austria, Wien Museum, Belvedere 21, Kunsthalle Wien, Centre for Visual Arts in Coimbra, Serralves Foundation in Porto, House of Arts Ústí nad Labem, GHMP Prague City Gallery, Institute for Contemporary Art Yerevan, MNAC Museum for Contemporary Art in Lisbon, Fine Arts Gallery, California State University Los Angeles, and Tabakalera International Centre for Contemporary Culture in Donostia / San Sebastián, among others.

Header image: Between revolutions, Ana de Almeida 2024 (José Alberto, Prague 1980-83)