Anna Hulačová

Anna Hulačová graduated from the Studio of Intermedia Work II (class of Jiří Příhoda) at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. In 2010, she went on a scholarship to the Korean National University of Arts in Soul, South Korea. Hulačová is an essential sculptress who works with Czech folk traditions, aesthetics and rituals coming from the country environment where she grew up. She also draws inspiration from East-Asian art, as well as art brut, sci-fi or personal mythology. Her work bears the elements of mystery, searching for archetypes and the universe. She likes working on the boundaries of the past and the future, where she takes models from the past – for example ancient statues, which are physically preserved but their full meaning is unknown to us. Her work is inspired by masks, which are characteristic for given tribal groups and their rituals. In Anna Hulačová’s interpretation, the rituals are replaced with artistic performances. She successfully combines products of nature – honey plasters, wax, wood, grain, twigs, eggs with folk tradition and completes them with artistic potential, i.e. creative dimension, which gives it order, meaning, message and certain distance with elements of humour and irony. In her work, Hulačová also uses all sorts of technical materials – concrete, silicone, putty, etc. By combining natural and technical materials she indicates the intentional ambiguity, which is cardinal for interpreting her work. She often uses two statues that imaginarily communicate with one another.  She emphasizes trans-cultural overlaps in these dialogues with busts. For example, in her work Close Encounters of Own Kind from the year 2013 – one bust refers to extraterrestrial civilizations (UFO) and the second one to East-Asian inspiration (Buddha). In her work, Anna Hulačová tries to capture the universe, which she transforms to human image in order for it to be more easily understandable. She emphasizes disputableness, which she evokes with her initial descriptiveness, in order to transform it to an abstract position at certain moments of the work process later on. By doing so, she gives the viewers space for their own imagination, while making them a little uncertain.

Dialogues between man and nature, and man and the universe have been key for her from the beginning of her work. She captured attention with her work Grandmother (2010), which she presented at the exhibition of student works at the Academy of Fine Arts. She made the bust from two types of clay, which she processed using a pastry mould and she used cereal straw for the hair. The two types of clay symbolized two countries, where the grandma spent her life – one native and the other one that she moved to after getting married. Symbolism is important for Anna Hulačová. She also used it in her work Kingdom in a Suitcase (2009) for which she received the Essl Art Award in 2009.

In her performances, Anna Hulačová often uses masks and fire. In her performance from 2012 entitled Swarms and Sources she had s scarf on her head, the decoration of which referred to the beak of a bird sitting on a tree; in her performance Situace 31 in Prague’s Pavilion from 2012, she had a mask from wood and honeycombs with wicks with dripping wax, and since the candles were burning, Anna was making drawings from the wax. Recently she has been making convex and concave objects – busts with the basic material being concrete and the descriptive part is represented by a printed photograph – e.g. Beauty and the Beast from 2013. From that year she abandoned drawing, which she used for decorating her statues, and replaced it with photographs. Drawing was essential for example in her works Knight Ivan or Faith (Saint George), both from the year 2012.

Anna Hulačová has exhibited in Prague, for example, in the Gallery Pavilon (2012), Altán Klamovka (2013), Gallery 35m² (2013) or Gallery 207 (2014). She conceives her exhibition projects as complex installations and she often creates her works for the given exhibition space.

Odhalení sochy, Třeboň, 2014

http://artycok.tv/lang/cs-cz/25438/odhaleni-sochy 

Citovaný komediant, Studio Hrdinů, 2013

http://artycok.tv/lang/cs-cz/21819/citovany-komediant

Opak je pravdou, MeetFactory, Praha, 2012

http://artycok.tv/lang/en-us/15207/opak-je-pravdouon-the-contrary 

Poloostrov, Galerie Jelení, Praha, 2009

http://artycok.tv/lang/cs-cz/3464/art-peninsula