Eva Kot'átková

Eva Kot'átková, Stories from the Living Room, 2010. Photograph by Thierry Bal 

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The Czech artist Eva Kot'átková (b.1982, Czech Republic) investigates personal space, everyday actions and situations, and the relationship between people and their surroundings. Through live interventions in given spaces, and sculptural constructions probed by the artist or willing participants, Kot'átková examines common contemporary gestures and rituals. She is particularly interested in how we are affected by the experiences of childhood, especially educational institutions, with their rules, policies and physical restrictions. Kot'átková uses personal observation and encounters with her participants to develop alternative, and at times surreal, devices and related actions that simultaneously question and propose human relationships within specifically defined frameworks.

Kot'átková’s project for Touched brought together people from Liverpool at different stages of life whose experiences and personal histories had been informed by a variety of social environments. Over several weeks some school children and some adults met separately and together in order to share and record – with various devices and in different formats – their respective life stories. Facilitated by the artist and Tate Learning curators, the children became the initiators of the discussions, interviewing the adults and deploying alternative methods of reconstructing, evaluating and archiving personal histories. During the second stage of the project children became the mediators of the adults’ life stories, being filmed reinterpreting and retelling in the first person the stories and memories of the adults.

During the exhibition the project continued to evolve, revealing in the gallery as a social structure comprising elements of an archive, functioning as a place for encounters between participants and ‘public’, and providing a stage for multi-faceted events and activities inspired by the conversations.

Eva Kot'átková al Liverpool Biennial 2010

Stories from the Living Room, 2010
Mixed media
Commissioned by and exhibited at Tate Liverpool