In the Shadow of the Lion
2018
curatorial project
essay and 6 photographs (inkjet print on paper, 120 x 150 cm)


This curatorial project was produced with help of Fotograf Festival 2018 with whom shared the same theme: non-work. It approached the topic from the perspective of non-productive time – a specific time block that Modernism defined as a socially-necessary space for relaxation, personal development and for solidifying the collective awareness. It followed how the term was defined and then changed in the Czech milieu over the past two centuries. From an expansive group of free-time institutions, associations and movements, a representative sample of 38 subjects was chosen. This sample is divided into six categories based on their societal, cultural and social focus. They were present mainly contemporary by-laws, articles of establishment, laws and proclamations. In the case of now defunct, but historically important, institutions, we presented period materials. In all documents have been marked the sentences and paragraphs that define the institutions’ foci. Most of them were bureaucratically formal, indeed reserved or distant; several of them, however, were to the contrary living and authentic. For reasons of clarity and legibility, the copies of the texts have been recopied in a 10% larger format. The exhibition also included a text prologue that attempts to offer a critical look at two specific views of free time and free-time activities.

photo: author’s archive and Tomáš Hrůza