Eva - Edit - Eden

installation, video / La Xina A.R.T. Gallery , Barcelona, Spain, 2019

The installation contains multi-meaning symbols related to the paradise as a (spiritual) utopia and works with different material as bearers of symbolic meaning (warning tape, waste plastic flowers from cemeteries, nylon stockings, dish sponge, brick).

We live in the times with no alternatives, at “the end of history". The current system dominates not because people agree with it, but because they are convinced that there are no alternatives. These are offered by the utopia, the vision of a non-existent world yet, which is different and better than the world in which we live now. One of the cornerstones of the concept of Utopia is a work by Thomas More (1478-1535), who defined it as a "good site" and at the same time as a "non-site” in 1516. The city is a space, which defines and simultaneously creates change, while the designing of ideal cities evokes a vision of an ideal society.

As the prototype of a utopian city, we can also consider the idea of the heavenly Jerusalem. "A garden vision of paradise is complemented by the geometric and urban vision of paradise, not only of a reacquired, but raised one, the vision of a dream city into which people reflect their hopes for a better living on Earth... The thought of this transformation of the Earth to the Heavens – the thought usually mixed with the concept of the abundant shelter and food, with the abolition of property privileges and self-centrality and also with the return to the relieved sexuality unburdened with the primeval sin, that Adam and Eve enjoyed in paradise – persecuted Christianity from the beginnings to the present.” (Harries, K., 2011: The Ethical Function of Architecture)

According to Zygmunt Bauman the present nostalgia epidemic towards the Paradise of the past is a reaction to the “epidemic of progress frenzy”, the twentieth century witnessed earlier.

The title of the exhibition Eva - Edit - Eden stands for the female (negative) role in the biblical story and at the same time for the new (positive) position of the woman in the transformation "editing" towards the better future.

Supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council.