UN CUT, 2023
Galeria Vyklad (Front): Photographs printed on textile, fabric, needle and thread, rope
Galeria Vyklad (Inside, available from the back): Projection on a photograph, projector, sound on loop available via headphones
Exhibition view, Galeria Vyklad, Trnava, Slovakia, 2023
The artist deals with ritualistic and performative self-portraiture in these photographic series. She closes herself in a room with selected objects, moves in space, and performs. Out of all the poses, she then chooses one, seemingly static pose. The artist then edits the photograph in Photoshop resulting in three versions of the same personality. In the form of a triptych, Klara Kusa places the textile photographs in the gallery window. The plot seemingly shifts from the artist herself in a pose of personal grief to her reaction to this photograph. Kusa reacts to herself with a kind of negation of her personality. In the end, the pain of the moment is brought to the surface.
Klara Kusa interprets Yoko Ono’s early happenings. Cut Piece was originally based on an experience of the present, but for the artist, the photograph of Ono with her torn clothes is a kind of parallel to her own work, which she believes also mirrors her later move away from self-portrait photographs toward conceptual and post-conceptual art.
Stred je inde, 2023
Site-specific Installation, digital photographs printed on paper, various formats, abstract marker drawings on paper, various formats, objects made out of garbage materials found in situ, including wires, tape, leftover materials from unused photographs
Galerie Sibir, Brno, Czech Republic, 2023
Photography credit: Monika Rigalova
Artists Andrea Uvacikova and Klara Kusa create works that carry many similar characteristics.
This is the reason why they chose to collaborate. They have never met in person and they know each other only through social networks They use this to their advantage when creating their own experimental method of collaboration. Both artists work automatically and subconsciously, creating a certain philosophy about the world that surrounds them, by using various terms and/or symbols. They pay close attention to the role of the spectator and the process of coding/decoding the imagery. Their collaborative project can be characterized by the usage of automatism and manipulation. As well as the utilizing of impression, strategy and cooperation. The main goal of their collaboration is to point to the centre. The centre of the image plays an important role here and can be perceived in the context of space, the brain, and/or the matter itself. Both authors disagree with the anthropocentric way of thinking, emphasizing multiplicity, and the search for harmony. The symbolic title of the exhibition Stred je inde (1) refers to the philosophy of Mark Fisher. The author uses the term “magical voluntarism” to describe a situation when an individual is unsuccessful or unable to keep up with society’s tempo. Society is often interested in infinite economic growth. When the individual cannot maintain their position, the response of the anthropocentric society would be, that the person did not do/achieve enough.
Visibility is a trap, 2022
Video includes text, sound and visuals by Klara Kusa, 3 mins, 35 s, 2022
Outside, Tyrsovo nabrezie: (left): A poster wall, wooden plates, swing construction, 2x2metres, posters with various designs, spray paint, QR code in the middle letting the people that walk around the area to see the video explaining the project
Exhibition view, T3 – kulturny prostriedok, Bratislava, Slovakia, 2022
Inside the T3 tram (right): site specific installation including materials like tape, pieces of destroyed posters, green screen, video is projected on green screen fabric on loop via projector
Exhibition view, T3 – kulturny prostriedok, Bratislava, Slovakia, 2022
The idea of this project is to create a never ending paradox. The statements of the posters are in a direct opposition to the video presented right next to these sentences. Pro- and anti-capitalist statements are mixed together and create a fusion dealing with topics such as shaming, visibility on social networks and censorship. The name of the project “Visibility is a trap” is a sentence quoted from the book “Discipline and Punish” by Michel Foucault. The project is open towards multiple interpretations and is not finite. The posters presented will be for sale on multiple websites allowing the paradoxical statements to grow even further.
For the opening of the exhibition Visibility is a trap, I decided to use two spots that were presented to me, one outside the tram at Tyrsovo nabrezie and the other one, inside the tram. The site-specific installation was available only for the opening and consisted of the video presented on the carved green screen. The opening of the exhibition involved my performance of putting another layer of posters on the wall outside the tram and disturbing one of the DJs with my DJ set skills even though I have never even touched a DJ set. I was basically creating sounds not knowing what I was doing. The set was therefore based on two opposite elements, disturbance and cooperation.
Skins I live in, 2022
Photographs printed on fine art paper
Plaster masks of author’s face installed in space
Exhibition view, Academy of Fine arts and Design, Bratislava, Slovakia, 2022
Skin. Its paradoxical non-existence. Nakedness. The pain that stems from the absence of skin. Identity. The inability to define oneself. This is the basis of the diagnosis called emotionally unstable personality disorder. When thinking about the terms “skin” and “identity”, I decided to shoot my own photographic film. Every photography creates an authentic scene. When put together, the pieces create a story of its own. A professor Marsha Linehan, that created a therapeutic approach for treating the aforementioned emotional instability once wrote: “People with BPD are like people with third degree burns over 90% of their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony at the slightest touch or movement.” Maybe that is why I use autotherapy as a way out of this pain. Maybe, I am able to create such art due to this pain.
my eyes will break through, spewing forth like a, 2021
Visuals used in the zine, 2022
Self-published zine, digital and analogue photographs and collages, appropriated and author’s texts, 2021
When peripheral vision is lost, we are all lost. Aren’t we? Or is it that in this moment we can finally see something? I suffer from the loss of peripheral vision and yet, I am an artist and a photographer. When looking for the cause of my vision problem, doctors told me I have a cyst of an unknown origin that is pressing on my pituitary gland. Some doctors claimed it is Rathke’s Cleft Cyst, some said it is benign tumor. It took me a long time to deal with this. Because by dealing with this, I had to deal with death that is constantly present in my life. The title of the artwork was taken from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath.
“I am drowning in negativism, self-hate, doubt, madness and even I am not strong enough to deny the routine, the rote, to simplify. No, I go plodding on, afraid that the blank hell in back of my eyes will break through, spewing forth like a dark pestilence; afraid that the disease which eats away the pith of my body with merciless impersonality will break forth in obvious sores and warts, screaming “Traitor, sinner, imposter.”
Sylvia Plath