She studied sculpture, ranging from wooden objects and plaster of Paris ones, and has been creating them since the 1970s (i.e. Cabinet I / Skřín I, 1977-78, Table / Stůl, 1979 or Clothes / Prádlo, 1978), and more monumental wooden objects (i.e. Doorway / Vrata, 1979-80 or Wings / Křídlo, 1979). Some of these were displayed at the well-known Malostranské dvorce show (1981). She then turned to creation of installations exploring concrete spaces.
During the first half of the 1980s she gained attention with her series „chairs / židli“ and „steps / schodů“, which took on the form of signs of the time. Chairs climbing the stairs / Židle sestupující po schodech, 1981, displayed among other places in the Art-Industrial Museum in Prague, casts doubt on the given space, which it overshadows by its grand measure. The incongruence of spatial relations is an important aspect of her further creations. Ms. Jetelová works with concrete spaces. She exposes their suppressed history and stories and tries to rehabilitate their memory. In her lit installations she first uses fire (Marked by Smoke / Značení kouřem in Prague’s Šárka Nature Preserve), later she switched to use of mainly lasers. Important aspects of her creations then become ephemerality, movement, constant change; all connected by different spaces and times. In the end the installation exists only in the form of photographs and other supplementary documentation.
One of her first architectural (utopic) interventions is the project, South Side Project / Projekt Jižní město (1983), a proposal for an underground space for a Prague tenement block, reacting on changes to the surrounding environment. Work with the landscape’s memory accents the changes created by man (Mines / The Tabebau Project : Doly / Projekt Tabebau dating from 1998 – using illuminated lines she once again exposes the one-time communications structure of the landscape; Crossing King’s Cross – she uses lights to map out the future path of a train route) as well as natural changes (in the Island Project / Islandský projekt – she enlists lasers to draw attention to the undersea intercontinental divide (mountainscape). In her „geographical project“ Songline 75° 36‘52‘‘ (1998) contemporary localisation techniques are used to join two spots on the earth. This is possible thanks mainly to use of the imagination stemming from local traditions.
An important theme for the majority of her projects is a certain form of dislocation; the series Domestication of the Pyramid / Domestikace pyramidy (1992-1994) is the continuation of the famous Chairs on the Stairs. In her newest projects one can find a focus on interactivity, for example, in the architectural proposal, Implants / Implantátů. This exhibit changes depending on the visitors.
