Milena Dopitová (*1963) is a Czech artist, photographer, sculptor, conceptual and multimedia artist with a social focus. She studied intermedia art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where she currently works as a professor and head of studio. She was the only woman to participate in the activities of the art group Pondělí, founded in 1989 as a free association of students at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts. In her work, she focuses on ordinary life, its individual experiences and everyday life. She reflects on the position of women in contemporary society and deals with general phenomena such as adolescence, aging, death, insecurity and violence, which she presents with personal input and in broad social relations.
In her work, she uses seemingly ordinary objects, to which she adds another dimension through her interventions. She has been dedicated to the issue of female identity and human corporeality throughout her career. She has participated in a number of important international and domestic exhibitions, for example at the Katzen Arts Center in Washington DC, the Chelsea Art Museum in New York, or the Gallery of the Capital City of Prague.
The exhibition Signal V presents her objects entitled Helmets from 1994. These are four structures covered with fabric, traditionally used in hairdressing, which, in their shape and material, refer to classic hairdressing hooded hair dryers. The work belongs to the author's significant cycle from the first half of the 1990s, in which she dealt with the themes of bodily hygiene, personal and public intimacy through objects referring to devices for improving the human body.
The author was inspired by the environment of an ordinary hair salon for this work. The hooded hair dryers lined up in a row reminded her more of a torture device, and the group of women sitting under them also seemed unusual. In the heat under the red-hot curlers and with the noisy operation of the devices, they could hardly communicate with each other. The path to beauty thus took place without words, in a shared destiny. What seemed like an ordinary part of a visit to the hair salon suddenly appeared from a much less pleasant side. In addition to caring for one's appearance, there was also discomfort, waiting, and the need to simply endure the entire procedure. In the author's view, the seemingly ordinary situation is transformed into a somewhat absurd and uncomfortable ritual, and the salon environment shifts from the idea of care and beautification to a much more ambivalent image.
The first helmet was created in 1992 for the exhibition Between Aesop and Mowgli, which was presented at the Václav Špála Gallery by the Pondělí group. The installation was developed into four objects a year later and was first exhibited in this form at the Internationale Kulturfabrik in Hamburg. It subsequently appeared at Milena Dopitová's solo exhibition at the Brno House of Arts in 2000 and later at the Prague City Gallery at the Stone Bell House in the exhibition Sometimes in a Skirt.
These large objects, reaching a height of over a meter and a half, are located on the right side of the Telegraph Gallery along the windows. They function in an unusual way in the architecture of the gallery. At first glance, they do not catch the eye in the foreground, but as soon as the visitor enters the gallery space, they become unmissable.
The four helmets are stacked evenly next to each other, yet they appear to be lying completely loose in the gallery. By combining dimensionality and silent presence, they evoke the impression of strange, mysterious monsters that the viewer immediately notices as they walk through the exhibition.
The exhibition Signal V: A Selection of Objects and Installations from the Robert Runták Collection can be visited at the Telegraph Gallery until October 1, 2026.
Text by: Barbora Pacíková
