Cut and Finish, 2018, Oil on linen, 180 x 240 cm
20 November 2025 - 19 February 2026
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.