Anetta Mona Chişa (*1975) and Lucia Tkáčová (*1977)
10 Tips for Eastern European Women, 2006
pen on paper, 5 pcs each 21 x 29,7 cm
from the collection of the Museum of Art in Žilina
acquired by purchase from the artists in 2010
A pair of women artists – according to art historian of Serbian origin Bojana Pejić – founded a “policy of friendship” more than twenty years ago, through which they realized cooperative work. At present, after uncovering many of its layers and ways of thinking of the artists, it is clear that it is characterized and united by the resistance to the “postpolitical and post-feminist world, expressing feminist skepticism, exposing the depth of capitalist power and questioning its effects on art. creation and society as we know it ”(B. Pejić).
At the beginning of the zero years, their joint work was perceived as a continuation of art devoted to gender issues, but even then it became apparent that the artists deconstructed the categories of postfeminist and feminist art in several works – which they expressed by organizing a curatorial exhibition The Room of Their Own (2003), which was metaphorically actually their work of art and set this attitude for a long time. Their art, their relationship to it and also the path of (their) art into the deeper echelons and accepted structures of not only on the Slovak but also on the international art scene, must be perceived in connection with their position of artists from the former Ostblock. And it was the path of their art outside the local coordinates (which may not apply to artists only) that the artists devoted themselves to for a time: examining the functioning of the institution of art and the network of present relationships around it. The program also includes a series of videos called Dialectics of Subjection #2 and #4) from 2005 and 2006, in which they judge curators and important world politicians in light “girly” conversations only on the basis of physical characteristics and attractiveness – attacking power and influence with their own (female) weapons.
The couple’s participation in the Venice Biennale (2011) took a self-relativizing approach as contradiction, an overview of the situation, but also questioning of an important exhibition of art, and thus of the mechanisms and processes associated with it. They placed a handwritten text of 80:20 on the façade of the Romanian Pavilion — this ratio expressing 20 of their reasons for not being at the Biennale (listed in several points) and 80 of the reasons for being there.
The degree of finding employment, building one’s position (and career) is also the leitmotiv of the work 10 tips of an Eastern European Woman. The artists subversively comment on the issue of immigrant minorities who try to work and (survive) in Western Europe. The project is based on a cynical reflection on the functioning of the world in the West, in which much can be achieved through personal relationships. Adapted to five Eastern European (post-socialist) contexts and languages (Slovak, Czech, Polish, Romanian and Hungarian), presented without an English translation, the tips consist of naming various possible strategic “moves” – meant, of course, with a dose of appropriate irony, on which women from Eastern and Central European countries can concentrate – in an effort to break through in the Western world.
The acquisition of this work was supported from public sources by the Slovak Arts Council.
The purchase of this work was financed with the contribution of the Žilina self-governing region.
