Presenting a fresh perspective, the exhibition highlights how contemporary women artists across generations—Paulina Olowska, Caroline Walker, and Adéla Janská—use painting to decode and reconstruct the cultural memory of Modernism. Through this lens, the artists reflect on “recycled” iconographies of the 1950s–1990s and reconsider themes of women’s labor, intimacy, and visibility within public and private spheres. It adopts a historical lens, reflecting on archetypal female figures of Socialist Modernism and the period of “Normalization” in Czechoslovakia—such as allegories of labor—and asks whether this visual canon allowed room for female desire. Scholars of the era often described the female worker as the Other. How, then, might we understand this socialist imaginary today? Drawing inspiration from the iconic 1970s Czechoslovak TV series Žena za pultem (Woman Behind the Counter), the exhibition juxtaposes figurative works with a scenographic display and a film installation that evoke the atmospheres of shop interiors and domestic workspaces. The gallery’s scenography incorporates industrial machines, sculptural and stainless-steel elements, and spatial mise-en-scène, extending the reflection on modern labor and gendered memory. A newly produced video work complements the installation, introducing the project through the voices and faces of the three participating artists. Presented amidst piles of scrap metal and staged compositions, the video explores scale, memory, and post-socialist transformation through a feminist lens.
