Anna Daučíková: The Grammar of the Gaze
Curated by: Lívia Páldi
Opening: 6 May 2025 (Tuesday) 6pm
On view: 7 May - 15 June 2025
Anna Daučíková is a pioneering figure in feminist and queer art in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. After completing her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava in 1978, Daučíková moved to Moscow in the early 1980s. Upon returning to Bratislava in 1991, she co-founded several women’s non-profit organizations, she took on the role of art editor for the feminist journal ASPEKT and became a vocal spokesperson for LGBTQI+ rights in Slovakia.
Over the past five decades, Daučíková has developed a diverse and comprehensive body of work, which spans painting, photography, collage, film, and sculpture. Her artistic practice evolved from traditional studio work to active participation in performance art events, which were widely organized within the Slovak art scene in the mid-1990s. In her video art, the engagement of the artist’s body and bodily action projected onto the screen became a central concern, articulating feminist and queer statements. Her practice is particularly focused on the concept of the 'mental body,' a result of her exploration of 'in-betweenness'—a term she coined to describe her transgender identity and the ways in which it shapes her art and worldview.
Her first solo exhibition in Hungary at Trafó Gallery will explore themes related to feminist critique and gender politics. It will feature a selection of her works from the last decades, including early single-channel videos, collages, and photo and video performance works from the 1990s, focusing on her understanding of the body as a "tool of intermediation" and addressing the sensualization of the visual. Anna Daučíková’s approach is characterized by an extraordinary sensibility for the way overarching societal structures shape self-definition and personal expression.
Anna Daučíková (1950, Bratislava) lives and works in Prague. Since 1991 she has exhibited internationally, amongst others at Tate Modern, London in 2024, at Secession, Vienna and PLATO, Ostrava in 2022, at the 14th Baltic Triennale, Vilnius and Rudolfinum, Praha in 2021, at The Corner at Whitman-Walker, Washington in 2020, at KW—Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Slovak National Gallery Bratislava, Museum of Socialist Realism, Tirana and Württembergische Kunstverein, Stuttgart in 2019; at Neubauer Collegium, Chicago in 2018, at documenta 14, Athens/Kassel in 2017, at Galerie Futura, Prague in 2016, at the Kyiv Biennial/School of Kyiv 2015 and at the Gender Check – Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe, MUMOK, Vienna in 2009.
Daučíková was a professor for many years at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and at the Salzburg Summer Academy.
Supported by: National Cultural Fund of Hungary, Káli Kövek
The exhibition is a collateral event of OFF-Biennale Budapest.
Image credit: Anna Daučíková: After the Turn (2019). Visual commentary on the collage series The Turn in the Bathtub (1996) (in collaboration with Jiŕí Thýn)
