Barbora Fastrová graduated in 2015 from the Photography Studio at UMPRUM in Prague headed by Aleksandra Vajd and Hynek Alt. While still a student, her work gradually shifted from classical photography to space, and she began to create installations, objects and videos. The medium as such essentially ceased to play an important role in her work. Instead, Fastrová decided to achieve results in this realm freely, but sensitively, using any artistic means and materials (to begin with concrete was her favourite material). This approach was clear in her diploma work, which she presented at the competition StartpointPrize 2015, which consisted of sculptures, video installations and other objects related to the issue of social media and the refugee crisis, which was at its peak in Europe at the time. Here, what had characterised her work up to this point became fully apparent, namely, a distinctive playfulness, a kind of basic, “childlike” reason and humour, through which she looks at serious and pressing contemporary issues without making light of them.
At the Studio of Photography at UMPRUM, Fastrová began working with her then classmate Johana Pošová, with whom she still has an artistic duo. In their collaborative work and in exhibition projects presented in Czech and foreign galleries, as well as in public space, the two artists often examine the supposedly superior relationship of civilised Western man to nature, taking inspiration from the stories or legends of indigenous peoples. Another theme they have long cultivated involves an ecological approach and sustainability within the practice of art.
Their first important presentation was an exhibition trilogy linked by the slogan “Life finds a way”, a quote from the movie Jurassic Park, translated into Czech as “nature finds a way”. Within the framework of three exhibitions held at the Berlinská model gallery in Prague (Netlač řeku, teče sama / Don’t push the river, it flows alone, 2014), TIC Gallery in Brno (Úsměv stojí méně než elektřina a dává více světla / A smile costs less than electricity and gives more light, 2015) at the Syntax Gallery in Lisbon (Brother, 2016), Fastrová and Pošová focused on man-made “artificial nature” and environments such as a zoo, an underwater world or a mock tropical island, i.e. places that give people the impression of wild nature, but in the safety of their own world, separate from these wildernesses. The installations, which included a combination of papier-mâché objects, ready-made objects such as artificially glowing jellyfish in an aquarium or a snake made from a pipe hose, video projections and textile works, reflected the inspiration they had found from time spent in South America. The artists brought back legends from their encounters with the cultures of the local indigenous tribes, which they used as a supporting narrative element in their exhibitions. For example, the story of two brothers, one of whom was evil and the other good, was transferred by the artists into the context of the current climate crisis and the absurd attitude of man towards nature in the contemporary world. Fastrová and Pošová, however, regularly work with various legends, fairy tales and stories about mythical creatures, and this brings a lightness and playfulness to their work, along with a deep message without excessive pathos.
Under the motto “Life finds a way”, the artists also organised a series of three one-night events that took place during their residency at INI Gallery in 2017. Here they focused on processes and organs in the human body as they relate to natural cycles or ancient rituals. They first examined the genital organs, sexuality and the principle of give and take in an event called Pickdick Picnic, from which visitors took home a ceramic phallic figurine. At the second event, the Lover’s digest jazz dinner, they focused on the digestive organs and feasted on bread baked in the shape of intestines to the soundtrack of saxophones. The last night of the Buch Buch Ceremony was dedicated to the heart and its rhythm. Although this was a departure from their previous ecologically-oriented themes, it was perhaps the first time that the topic of sustainability within artistic operations came up: “In our last project at INI, we realised that we were interested in the principle of distributing the art we create. We like the moment of gifting, and thus the new way of accessing art that emerges for both us artists and visitors.”
The topic of recycling in artistic operations and sustainability in the production of works and exhibitions was addressed, for example, at the Cheap Art exhibition at the AMU Gallery in 2018, which was a turning point as regards the direction the artists would take in the future. In it, they used only recycled materials (second-hand textiles, old boxes), and visitors had to pedal a treadmill in order to generate the energy to light the gallery. Fastrová says in her portfolio: “At the same time, it was a commentary on the situation on the art scene, where until then environmentalism had been dealt with mainly as content and less as form. It was important for us to demonstrate a radical approach and to ascertain what visual compromises it entailed.”
Recycled textile material is also used by the artists in the creation of large-scale images woven from scraps of old fabric. Examples include the work HADA, which in 2020 was spread across almost the entire wall of the Entrance Gallery in Břevnov, or the large-format tapestry entitled Prsa, děti, bytosti a smetí / Breasts, Children, Creatures and Garbage, 2022), which was part of the National Gallery’s exhibition project Květinová unie / Floral Union, presented in Brussels on the occasion of the Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union. As with HADA, the theme of motherhood appears here, as is evident from the title of the work. In 2023, the two artists devoted an entire exhibition entitled Breeding at the Čepan Gallery in Trnava to motherhood.
Fastrová and Pošová often refer to the human, animal or even mythological body, which connects the human and the animal, as we see, for example, in Výstava o kentaurech / Exhibition on Centaurs (Temporary Parapet, Bratislava, 2018). Centaurs also featured in the public space at the Vlasta housing estate in Prague as part of the M3 Festival in 2020, when they added the rear (equine) part of the body to the sculpture Acrobat by Vendelín Zdrůbecky. The second statue, representing the back half of the centaur’s body, was then built separately in such a way that anyone could become the mythical creature for a moment when linking up to it. The connection between the human and snake body appeared not only in the HADA tapestry referred to above, where it is a creature with a human torso and head whose limbs are snakes, but also in the concrete sculpture HAD in the public space in Portheim Park (2018). Here, parts of one large snake body emerge from the ground and a human figure grows on one of the arches of the snake’s back. The object again invites interaction, and can serve as a climbing frame for children or as a seating area.
The work of this artistic duo operates in parallel with contemporary trends such as ecological art and ecofeminism, as well as critiques of Western civilization and anthropocentrism, which the artists playfully and wittily reflect upon in the content of their works. Moreover, they have adapted the way they create works and the way they operate on the art scene such that sustainability is a key characteristic.
