Artwork of the month:
Daniela Krajčová — Shared Threads & Far Taction

In 2023, the Nitra Gallery purchased a collection of works by Daniela Krajčová Jr. Since 2002, the Nitra Gallery has been striving to support and increase the representation of female artists in its collections. The acquisition of the Shared Threads series and the work callled Far Taction was one of the steps towards fulfilling this resolution.

The experience of motherhood gave Daniela Krajčová Jr. – a very good observer in terms of both passive and active ways of looking at authorship – , the opportunity to draw attention to the invisible pitfalls of the socially unappreciated work of mothers, i.e. taking care of children and the household. The author also considers the spatio-temporal exclusion of mothers from the normal way of life to be problematic. Despite this life experience, she has not abandoned her particular artistic direction – social engagement and participatory way of creating – but has embraced it. 

Before becoming a mother, Krajčová often worked on participatory projects in which she personally met people from marginalised communities and excluded minorities and actively involved the audience in her work. With the arrival of her children, she found inspiration in the more intimate “parallel” world of mothers. On social media and forums about motherhood, she captured anonymous, short, fragile accounts shared across the cobwebbed threads of the internet, filled with the negative emotions and experiences of vulnerable women-mothers. The artist, sensitive to this life situation that is close to her heart, transformed them into austere acrylic drawings on textiles.

The geometrically clean and stylized drawing of Shared Threads in a black and white aesthetic underscores the polarizing black and white vision of the “invisible” problems of our society. Inspired by the anonymous testimonies of the ‘participants’, the depictions show unflinching snapshots of women’s invisible lives on a clean twin (matrimonial) bed sheet. Twenty-eight double-pane “comic or satirical film (storyboard)” windows slowly unfold, telling the hidden stories unfolding daily in Slovak households. The shared threads were preceded a year earlier by less stylized drawings on long narrow strips of textile, simulating the scrolling threads of discussion.¹

Issues of domestic violence, alcoholism of the man and its consequences, frustration and depression of the woman, economic dependence of the woman on the partner, misunderstanding of the closest ones, aggression towards the weaker ones, the partner leaving the woman and the children (duties), the escape (involuntary departure) of the woman with the children from the partner, the fear of the woman for her life and the life of the children, the feeling of no way out – suicide (culmination of a tragedy), abuse of the woman and (possibly) the children, increasing loneliness to isolation, attempts to combine work and childcare, repeated (negative) patterns of behaviour, separation (divorce) and many more are revealed by the author through a window after window, perhaps even the next apartment.

Textiles became her most natural material. In particular, bed sheets, which, despite their large size, can be easily folded, stored and ironed – making them “shine.” Perhaps another reference to invisible “female” labour? The spatial installation also completes the concept of the work. The artist deliberately hangs the sheets on clotheslines, attaching them with clothespins – another reference to invisible “feminine” domestic labour? In 2020, the textiles were independently hung in this way in the New Synagogue in Žilina, the author’s hometown. They were also hung as part of the project Wandering Gallery – Blockade of Extremism, Slovakia.

The video animation Far Taction – 2021 presents a different side of the artist’s work. Nevertheless, it again depicts a topic that stands on the periphery of social life in Slovakia and does not belong to political priorities. The hand animation – animated ink drawings on textile (mock-ups on the background) – tells the story of a young refugee mother. The artist herself tells us the story of a strange woman through simple images and sentences, clearly pointing out that Slovak is not the character’s mother tongue, along with Slovak or English subtitles. In her work, Krajčová looks for her own ways of storytelling, experimenting with more or less traditional media to achieve a moving narrative. 

About halfway through, the video animation transforms from black and white to colour. Does the animation represent an increasing colourfulness – of places and characters -, a calm presence, an increasing sense of safety, inclusion or, finally, social acceptance? Do the black and white “memories” of the war conflict in the native homeland fade? We can find the answer for ourselves…