The box

Prague Quadrennial student exhibition 2023 winner - The Best Visionary Teamwork

When the world faces war, artists’ ideas become its weapons. On an international platform, shared with thousands of people, artworks gain special power. A unique installation of gun boxes and thread interacts with the audience, changing shape, scale, and context daily through their touch and communication.

Thanatos, trapped in the weapon boxes, transforms into a soft surface, wrapped in a sheath of thread. This thread, which archetypically symbolizes birth, destiny, transformation, and relationship, seeks to modify real space into an area of connection. Tied by the feminine, supernatural, liminal beings, the thread is seen as a link between worlds, a way of moving between the layers of the cosmos/psyche. It reminds us of the descendant of the land of Colchis (part of Georgia), Ariadne, and her thread – a reliable pathfinder in a difficult situation, from the realm of darkness to the light. It also recalls a unique discovery of the oldest flax fibers, dating back 34,000 years, in the Dzudzuana cave in Georgia, which showed that they were not only twisted into threads but many were also dyed, like the 29,000-year-old fiber imprints in the Czech site of Dolni Vestonice.

So touch the thread… It reveals something so intangible: invisible links to time, our memories, fears, dreams, histories, emotions, hopes…