The project of the permanent display draws attention not only to the context of the collection of works, but also to the provision of this activity. It is carried out almost exclusively from extra-budgetary sources, but installations and video installations are the most financially demanding works. If the amount of funds exceeding € 100 000 spent on intermedia and media art purchases in the period 2017-2021 seems to be a high number, it should be noted that it was “spread” over five years and only as a part of the collection funds, which the gallery must expand ^[1].

The emphasis on architecture is necessary for this type of exhibition and the specifics of the space (small area) must also be considered. Together with the design of the display, it creates the so-called communication interface between the viewer and the work. Its elements are also the adjustment of works (plinths or plexiglass boxes made to measure for works), but the velvet curtain in powder and body hue has become the main feature. In addition to “softening” the sharp contours of the white-cube type of space, it is an important interior element in the intent of the exhibition’s theme – especially in its ambivalence coded as Gentle (women’s) Force.

The works in the display combine the gender problematics and issues reflected by forms of media art and intermedia since the mid-1990s. Given the number of works, it is not an overview of the art of postfeminism, feminism and gender art after 1990 ^[2]. On the contrary – the works in it are their samples and are presented in such a way as to reveal wider contexts: present at the time of their creation, also the position of the work as part of the artist’s work, but also within the mentioned tendencies. The works deal with ambiguities in the perception and viewing of the (female) gender, they touch on surviving gender stereotypes – the so-called “gender role segregation” and their problematic context. The name of the display, set as a contradiction, is based on them and is a thematic umbrella of the works. It refers to the phrase ‘the weaker sex’, also used as an irony referring to of women’s physical and mental ‘equipment’, and emphasizes the inconspicuous resilience and perseverance with the connection of opposites of tenderness and strength as ‘fragile / female forces’, whether this is a real fact or a cliché. It is also a reference to the contents of terms such as “woman power” or “girl power”, which appeared in our art after 1989. The works in the collection are references to intimacy, privacy and various forms of communicating corporeality. The language individual artists goes from introverted expression, ironic perspective or sarcasm, to radically expressive speech. In the 1990s, the number of women artists reflecting on the schematic perception and depiction of women in visual culture (especially in advertising) increased significantly in Slovakia. Criticism of this schematism was undoubtedly an important but rather universal theme, and so the language and morphology of the works were similarly universal, especially in the case of the young generation of artists ^[3]. On the contrary – in the zero years in the category of feminism and post-feminism, personal themes penetrated, the artist’s privacy was opened up and a more specific addressee was defined, – this factor is also demonstrated by the exhibition ^[4]. Compared to the 1990s, in the following decades the element of the so-called self-positioning” – defining the position: as the artist-mother / partner ^[5], in a broad sense also as part of the structures of the visual arts and artistic community, which they comment on from the position of women ^[6].

The First Museum of Intermedia III – Gentle Force display is a continuation of a series of exhibitions held at the Museum of Art in Žilina, which dealt with feminism, post-feminism and family art in Slovak fine art after 1990 – especially Paradigm Woman a (in)time ^[7]. Although not targeted, the Gentle Force display is connected with the (in)time exhibition by the presence of a male counterpart ^[8]. Initially, as an (apparent) opposite, given by the opposite sex (in both exhibitions, except for the authors, women exhibited exclusively) can in both cases be understood as a form of “test of correctness”, which reaffirmed the aspect of gender and gender perception.
Mira Sikorová-Putišová

^[1] Overview of Funds for Obtaining Works for the Collection of Intermedia and Media Art (1991 – 2015): First Museum of Intermedia I – II (2012 – 2019), catalogue for the permanent display, p. 76. In the 1990s (1990-1997), works of intermedia and media art were obtained from the museum’s own budget in Žilina, with an important minority segment being donations. In the years 2006 – 2015 the museum covered purchases through the grant program Acquisitions of the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic and since 2016 – through subsidies from the Slovak Arts Council, volume of funds obtained since 2017: € 95125 – amount has been invested to purchase of twenty-two works. Two works of the amount of 5300 € were purchased from museum’s own funds in 2017.
^[2] Gender defines cultural environment, social relationships and interactions, so it is a more complex social and cultural construct, and it is not possible to determine it solely on the basis of different anatomical characteristics
^[3] Exceptions in terms of the provable authenticity of the language are video installations and installations from the 1990s by Jana Želibská and paintings by Veronika Rónaiová.
^[4] It was defined as the art of radical privacy. More: Gregor, Richard: Authenticity, tradition and post-national situation. On development predispositions of Slovak visual art of the „zero years“. In: Sikorová-Putišová, M. (ed): Zero years. Žilina : Museum of Art, 2011, p. 123. 
^[5] Gabika Binderová’s video reports on her position and work in the so-called institutionalized union, an aspect we call the marriage art. With Erik Binder, they were co-authors of several works on the subject of partnership at the beginning of the zero years. More: Klodová, L: Authentically lived stereotype – a neglected phenomenon of marital art. In: Umělec 2005/1.
^[6] For example, in the works of Veronika Rónaiová and Aneta Mona Chişa and Lucia Tkáčová.
^[7]  The exhibition was part of the trilogy: Physical / Mental (1995), Paradigm Woman (1996), Between Man and Woman (1997), with concept by Katarína Rusnáková. They were linked by a gender attribute, and the exhibitions presented a masculine, feminine, and confrontationally feminine-masculine perspective. The following exhibited at Paradigm: Jana Želibská, Ilona Németh, Petra Nováková-Ondreičková, Denisa Lehocká. More: Rusnáková, K.: Paradigm of a Woman. Žilina: Museum of Art, 1996, p. 5.-13.
^[8] The work of Ladislav Čarný in the current display and the work of Vladimír Havrilla – 10 minutes (1985) in the exhibition (in)time, interpreted as counterpoint by Lucia Stachová – a male view of the exhibition motif, which was intimacy and revealing secrets. Exhibiting artists: Jana Bodnárová, Pavlína Fichta Čierna, Anna Daučíková – Christina Della Giustina, Eva Filová, Aneta Mona Chişa, Eva Masaryková, Elena Pätoprstá, Ľuba Sajkalová, Emöke Vargová. More: Stachová, L.: (in)time. In: Mazúr, M. (ed): Museum of Art 2001, Žilina: Museum of Art, 2001, unpaged. Moravčík, M.: Her story. In: dart – revue současného umenia, 3-4 / 2001, p. 61-63.