Jana Želibská

Discovery of Possibility
Francisco Carolinum Linz

The Female Body and Its Autonomy

The Slovak artist Jana Želibská’s (b. Olomouc, former Czechoslovakia, 1941; lives and works in Bratislava, Slovakia) output ranges from fine art prints, drawings, paintings, objects, and videos to environments, conceptual art, installations, and intermedia art. She first emerged as a major figure on Slovakia’s independent art scene, which embraced conceptual and performative approaches, in the 1960s. Her confidence and progressive convictions speak from her early installations, which candidly address erotic desire and shatter patriarchal structures. The female body stands at the center of Želibská’s immersive environments and paintings. She likes to toy with the audience’s voyeuristic desire, integrating mirrors where one would expect to see female genitalia and veiling parts of the body with curtains.

Jana Želibská—Discovery of Possibility is the artist’s first solo exhibition outside Slovakia after she made her international debut in the shared pavilion of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. The accompanying catalogue is the first publication on her oeuvre in the German-speaking countries and includes contributions by Nathalie Hoyos, Lucia Gregorová Stach, Rainald Schuhmacher, and Alfred Weidinger.