Opening 18:00
The exhibition Za Pultem (Behind the Counter) traces diverse interpretations of femininity and the real and symbolic presence of women in the public sphere. Through a historical lens—spanning Socialist Modernism and Czechoslovakia’s “Normalization”—it revisits allegories of labour and asks whether this visual canon left room for female desire. How, then, might we read the socialist imaginary today?
Across generations, Adéla Janská, Paulina Olowska and Caroline Walker use painting to decode and recast the cultural memory of Modernism. Their works sift “recycled” iconographies of the 1950s–1990s to reconsider women’s labour, intimacy, and visibility between public and private life.
Inspired by the 1980s TV series Žena za pultem (Woman Behind the Counter), the exhibition sets figurative painting within a scenographic display and film installation that evoke shop interiors and domestic workspaces. Industrial and stainless-steel elements, machines, and spatial mise-en-scène frame the works; a new video—presented amid scrap metal and staged compositions—introduces the project through the artists’ voices, exploring scale, memory, and post-socialist transformation through a feminist lens.
Za Pultem (Behind the Counter) reconsiders the socialist legacy’s echoes in contemporary visual culture while posing urgent questions about gender, labour, and visibility today. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication with contributions from Yelena Yemchuk and Joanna Zielinska, edited by Krzysztof Gutfrański.
