Miluji / I love

Desire and its imaginaries are themes that are also present in Klodová’s earlier work Miluji / I Love (2001) in Neratovice. This is a monumental landscape intervention consisting of six three-metre letters created from hand-worked sandstone blocks and placed on a six-metre high mound. The letters spell out “Miluji” (I Love), and can act as a reference, belief, monument or place of pilgrimage. In terms of its materials and composition this project evokes a sacral and mysterious impression reminiscent of Klodová’ early work Božena. The connection to this work is reinforced by the starting point, a quote from the writer in question, Božena Němcová. However, the brevity of this statement underlines its universal character.

The construction of this monumental sculpture was accompanied by photo documentation of a performance given by Klodová with Lucie Jandová and Helena Poláková, which was published in a magazine under the title Krásné holky v akci / Beautiful Girls in Action (2001– 2003). This series of photos depicts the artists working fictitiously on the monument in clothes suggesting that they are sex workers. The very positions they adopt while working are intended to illustrate and promote their erotic services. The project has a fundamentally critical and ironic dimension, the aim of which is to interrogate and in part disparage the artist’s own work and disrupt its serious and lyrical atmosphere, as well as the seriousness of the artist herself, a trait that is often to be found across the spectrum of Klodová’s work.