GALERIE FIDUCCIA, OSTRAVA (CZ)
The Return of the Nest Robber
“ATTENTION,” a voice began to call, and it was as though an oboe had suddenly become articulate. “Attention”, it repeated in the same high, nasal monotone. “Attention.”
Lying there like a corpse in the dead leaves, his hair matted, his face grotesquely smudged and bruised, his clothes in rags and muddy, Will Farnaby awoke.
When Will wakes up under a palm tree and an exotic bird sitting on its top shouts at him something about the necessity to focus on the present moment, being jolted by the shipwreck he does not remember who he is and what the present means to him. He is in the initial point of the unconscious where starts the journey on which he would find the full memories of his life as well as the journey’s goal. The confrontation with the situation on the island, which gave the name to this Aldous Huxley’s novel, will make him radically reassess his attitudes. The narration of the novel follows a relatively simple line of the main character’s development from a cynical man absolutely committed to predatory capitalism into a person who is in harmony with humanistic principles of life in the utopian society on the island – the society the demise of which he has to (partly as a consequence of his previous actions) witness at the end of the novel.
However, Will Farnaby is not important. He is merely a literary character who serves as a mediator of Huxley’s philosophical interpretation of the vision of new society. Will Farnaby only leads the readers through the island to facilitate understanding of the concept.
The details of Huxley’s utopian society are not important for us either – there is no need to know about and discuss the specific synthesis of modern medical technologies and Mahayana Buddhism. What is important, on the other hand, is thinking about the island as a space which is deliberately isolated from the wider context of the 20th century society development and which yet managed to learn from its mistakes and is fully aware of exterior events, which the island condemns in belief in pacifism.
Tereza grew up surrounded by forests and not in an isolated utopian community (although who can tell the scenarios a child’s mind projects into its environment). She keeps coming back to forests and probably always will. When she started dating Roman Štětina, spending a number of days together in a forest was one of the initial tests of their relationship. They both returned even closer and more interconnected than they had been before. What matters is the possibility to be alone – in forest, I don’t want to talk to anyone – and it is vitally important to share such feelings, says Tereza. As she does not like talking about her work and its conceptions, it is her fiction writing that reveals her more; stories linked to countryside and forests in particular. “A stag never speaks in a low voice,” reads one of the short stories, “because an animal so strong can be either silent in its contemplation or roaring in defence and in the moments of love. The character’s personality in her story is close to her work in general – not so much in the polarity of the text and the sculpture (or photo respectively) but rather in the intensity of the experience. Tereza is an obsessive craftswoman and a creator of tangible things that fill her studio – this reflects her urge to leave a legacy. Similarly, the stag in her story realises at the end of his life the need to materialise his life story and with his antlers he writes all over the plain words about understanding which disappear along with his decease. The entropy and reconciliation with finiteness as well as searching for great answers to life are more than typical for Tereza. At the same time, she accomplishes this with humbleness and without excessive pathos.
Tereza was raised in a Christian environment and, to a certain extent, the legacies of institutionalized catholic liturgy form her work. However, she manages to shift from this system, which was defined in her childhood, to far wider contemplations about personal religiosity and its reflections in the faith and rituals of nature nations. In a special way, she manages to connect the strict Roman Catholic rite with the dematerialized image of omnipresent higher power. Tereza Jindrová points out the connection of Tereza’s work with alchemy, transmutation of materials and with the change of object’s value. While all of that is definitely true, present and relevant, the motivation for it is, in my view, slightly different. Alchemy has always been an economically directed discipline (with the exceptions that prove the rule granted). It is not the change of the value but its finding and manifestation in the original material that is important. In spite of experiments with bronze or most recently with onyx and surface gilding, the authentic natural material worked on with purely amateur methods and sophisticated inputs via photography or drawing remains the essential aspect of Tereza’s work. The syncretic connection of religious traditions from different parts of the world testifies the ancient search for communicative channels between human and the transcendent level (or more precisely its representation in our world). As says Spinoza, God is here, God is omnipresent, God is nature. We only have to be sensitive enough to feel the manifestations.
Searching for alternative forms of communication through syncretic connection of sympathetic sorcery, rituals and instruments of great canonical religions is essential not only for this exhibition but for Tereza’s art in general. Objects installed with care in a gallery have individual meanings in the complex expression of desire for mutual dialogue instead of one-way call. The shapes and materials move along the scale from direct references to liturgical or ritual items to their free interpretations. Hugely important is the role of textile objects and string webs referring to the games of nations which lacked textual expression. These string games and diagrams emerged in various prehistoric civilizations in various corners of the world with no possibility of mutual influence or common source. Surprisingly enough, this tool for visual communication and narration broadcast is – along with singing as a universal means of verbal communication – common in cultures lacking sign language. Diagrams frequently display a process. They always use strings of the same length, strings long enough for our hands to hold. Tereza creates her own diagrams as a means of communication and unknowingly continues in the work of Harry Everett Smith, an American Beat Generation artist, one of the essential artists of the New York scene, who obsessively collected such diagrams and instructions to their creation. While his activities in most cases consisted solely in documentation and description, Tereza integrates them into her ritual compositions.
Will Farnaby wakes up and voices lead him into the dense bushes in the jungle where he suddenly appears in the middle of a village. The locals take care of him and dress the wounds he has from the shipwreck. His views overloaded with the western civilization context slowly weaken partially due to his epiphany and partially due to psychotropic substances. He learns to sense life and objects around him in a far wider, more open context of the situation. In order to achieve real understanding and experience of Tereza’s works it is almost necessary to undergo a similar process of “de-learning”. We are used to perceive contemporary art via reading long curator’s texts. Tereza’s art, however, does not require explanation of the concept. Everything is suspiciously familiar and similar to the encoded legacies of our past as well as the contemporary knowledge. All it requires is an increased attention and determination to keep it.
