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The central figures are insects — the caddisfly (Trichoptera), a subtle architect of currents, and the violet oil beetle (Meloe violaceus), a wanderer dependent on the bodies of other species. Their life strategies open a space for reflecting on sympoiesis — the joint making of the world, which never arises in isolation but always within intricate interconnections. The caddisfly builds its case from fragments of its surroundings, turning its body into an archive of river flows and the memory of the landscape. The oil beetle reminds us that existence is always relational — its larvae survive only through their journey on another’s body. These insect gestures become lessons in kinship through difference, a study of coexistence that is fragile and unpredictable.
From these observations also grows the artists’ own practice. They ask: what does it mean to enter into coexistence with a species whose language is composed of the vibrations of water, bodily rhythms, or random trajectories through the landscape? How can we learn from modes of existence that do not speak in words, but through traces, signals, and sensitive movements? The answers take the form of a playful and performative practice, where embodiment serves as a method of inquiry — not by imitating nature, but by living through it together.
The performative structure made of reinforcing steel rods, into which visitors may step, embodies the caddisfly’s protective case. The construction carries the logic of layering and temporary shelter: the body within becomes a mobile shell, responding to and reshaping the gallery space.
The exhibition also includes Lukáš Karaba’s video essay The Fabulative Nature of a Being, That Let Itself Be Led (two-channel video, 16:30 min). The work interweaves fact and fiction, creating studies in a forest environment inspired by the life cycle of the violet oil beetle. The body here appears as a moving medium — a site of encounter and transformation in contact with its surroundings.
Curatorial text by Maja Štefančíková
Photo credit: Jakub Fried