Le Chat Noir is a site-specific exhibition by Julie Béna and Mark Ther, created for the historic premises of Parnas. A place where different forms of cultural and social life have intersected for more than a century, Parnas becomes an integral part of the exhibition. From the bohemian circles of the First Czechoslovak Republic and the cinematic milieu of FAMU to the jazz and underground scenes of the 1970s, the venue has witnessed successive generations, social roles and modes of self-presentation. This layered history provides the setting for an encounter between two artistic approaches grounded in drawing, staging and the exploration of identity.
The dialogue between the two artists begins with a collaborative collage of drawings on the wall by the entrance. Figures, gestures, landscapes and narrative fragments come together in a shared composition, while the distinctive visual language of each artist remains clearly recognisable. The collage introduces the exhibition’s central themes: the relationship between performed roles and personal experience, queer identity, the memory of place, and the ways in which images shape our perception of the past.
Julie Béna’s drawings emerge from her longstanding engagement with theatre, literature, cabaret and popular culture. Her characters appear as performers in an unknown production, adopting and transforming different identities through gesture and stylisation. In her work, Béna explores questions of female representation, gender roles and social expectations. Poetic irony combines with a subtle sense of unease, creating fictional worlds in which familiar cultural figures acquire new meanings.
In Mark Ther’s practice, drawing develops alongside video and installation. His work combines precise composition, cinematic atmosphere and a sensitivity to stories that remain partially untold. Landscapes associated with the memory of specific places alternate with intimate figurative scenes and portraits of young men. Ther has long explored queer identity, sexuality, corporeality and suppressed layers of Central European history. Sudeten German experience, language and cultural memory intertwine in his work with camp aesthetics, fashion and personal fascination.
For Le Chat Noir, Ther has also created new large-format drawings on canvas, presented in Parnas’s main hall. Their scale brings drawing into a direct relationship with the architecture and gives the figures a powerful physical presence. The canvases surround the viewer and contribute to the scenographic character of the installation as a whole.
The exhibition’s architecture is structured around tables arranged throughout the space, upon which Julie Béna’s new glass objects in the form of lamps are displayed. Through them, light becomes part of the exhibition’s atmosphere, while simultaneously recalling the social history of Parnas as a place of gathering and nightlife. Another prominent element of the installation is a monumental figure of the Jester, inspired by historic French automata. The figure of the fool extends Béna’s interest in theatricality, repetitive gestures and the mutable nature of performed roles.
Throughout the exhibition, the installation is activated by young performers who, at Ther’s initiative, move around the tables, sit at them and eat together. The figures familiar from his drawings thus enter the space of Parnas as living bodies. Their presence connects the individual works and restores to the interior the social rituals of observing, dining and gathering.
Le Chat Noir presents new works by Julie Béna and Mark Ther in an installation conceived specifically for Parnas. The collaborative collage of drawings, Ther’s large-format canvases, Béna’s glass lamps, the monumental Jester and the live performance together form an exhibition in which the distinctive visual worlds of both artists encounter the history of one of Prague’s most remarkable sites of cultural life. The exhibition was part of the fifth edition of PRAGUE ART WEEK 26, which presented 100 events from the programs of forty leading Prague art institutions from September 24–27, 2026.
