Parallel Images, 2015
Eva Koťátková
Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), b. 1982
Gelatin silver prints
Having grown up in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia, Eva Kot’átková creates collages, performances, and site-specific installations that explore the individual’s relationship to social structures and institutions such as hospitals and schools. These three vignettes depict confrontations between silhouetted figures, some of whom wield devices inspired by the artist’s research in the archives of local institutions, like the Psychiatric Hospital Bohnice outside of her native Prague. Kot’átková also draws on the aesthetics of twentieth-century Czech surrealism (such as Emila Medková’s Shadowplay photographs from the late 1940s), absurdist literature, and books on psychology, medicine, and social science.