Artists: Eglė Budvytytė, Kasha Potrohosh, Viktória Revická, Jura Shust, Ádám Ulbert, Alicja Wysocka
Curated by Flóra Gadó

Opening: 14 April 2023, 6 p.m.
Opening performance: Viktoria Revická: Fermentation Motion, 2023
Performed by: Viktoria Revická, Nela Rusková, Kristián Šmelko

The exhibition Listening to the waterfalls of the sun is inspired by recent interest in spiritual worldviews and the revival of ancient knowledge in contemporary art. In times of crisis such as the current one, it becomes more understandable that artists turn towards those oft-hidden stories and non-scientific approaches which helped people get through difficulties in the past and which are now worth reconsidering. They ask: what can we learn from past belief systems and ways of thinking? How can we revisit folk traditions without repeating far-right nationalist rhetoric? How can we create more resilient communities and within these communities new rituals in order to shape a livable present and future?

The exhibition examines the ecological crisis of our present from this specific angle and takes us back to times when people had a different, more holistic relationship with nature. References to former magical rituals, folk traditions and questions around healing and ethnomedicine resonate in the exhibited works by artists from the wider Eastern-European region. However, while revisiting the past, artists don’t get stuck there; they believe that if we revisit these ancient belief systems we might be able to find various survival strategies which could be useful today.

Flóra Gadó, a curator, researcher and art critic based in Budapest, has been working as a curator at the municipal contemporary art center Budapest Gallery since 2018. She holds a PhD in Film, Media and Cultural Studies from Eötvös Loránd University (2021) and has curated several exhibitions both in Hungary and the neighboring countries, including TIC Gallery (Brno), Julius Koller Society (Bratislava), Trafó Gallery (Budapest) and within the framework of OFF-Biennale Budapest. 

Her field of interest is currently centered around the politics and poetics of care, where she examines artistic practices which reflect on how our image of care, including care for ourselves, for others and for our environment, has changed in recent decades.

Opening perfomance

Viktoria Revická will adapt her previous video performance Fermentation Motion into a live event. It will take place parallel to the opening of the exhibition as a durational performance which transforms the process of fermentation into bodily movements.

Venue: tranzit.sk, Beskydská 12, Bratislava
Open: Tuesday – Friday: 2:30 – 6:30 p.m.

*The title of the exhibition is an adaptation of a line from the poem Dogfish by Mary Oliver.

For more information visit please: tranzit.sk / exhibition / listening-to-the-waterfalls-of-the-sun

Cover picture: Eglė Budvytytė: Liquid Power has no Shame, 2017, video still, courtesy of the Artist