SEFO 2024 TRIENNIAL HAS ENTERED THE PUBLIC SPACE IN OLOMOUC
Two new installations by Slovak artist Ilona Németh have enriched the centre of Olomouc. As part of the SEFO 2024 Triennial, they will highlight the role of monuments in today’s public space and will also bring contemporary Central European art out of the walls of the Olomouc Museum of Art.
“On the Upper Square you can see the installation Handiwork, which is based on textile and later metal models of garages used on housing estates during socialism. Ilona Németh uses them to test the public space of the city and the opinion about it,” says Martina Mertová, the curator of the SEFO 2024 Triennial, adding that the installation was originally supposed to be on Republic Square. “Here, she would have pointed out the problematic current use of the square, which is a valuable urban space with one of the six Baroque fountains, but is used as a parking lot.”
The Olomouc Museum of Art is organizing the SEFO 2024 Triennial. Moments from 27 June to 29 December 2024. “We hope that in cooperation with the city we will be able to move Handiwork to Square of the Republic during this time,” adds Mertová.
The second space in Olomouc where Ilona Németh entered with her work is the Square of National Heroes. Specifically, the work Memorial to Women Who Cooked Salt. It is the torso of a monument intended for Crikvenica, Croatia. Németh is commemorating the strong tradition of male monuments there, as well as domestically, with a new piece dedicated to female heroines.
“Our idea to create a memorial to women in public space in Crikvenica is based on researching the history of the place, studying and listening to the local people in the area. We were influenced by the story of local women who cooked salt during the Second World War. They boiled salt from sea water to help their families survive while the men were fighting or working abroad. There are still women alive who have personal experience of this process. We also studied the local artistic heritage present in the town: sculptures and monuments by local sculptor Zvonko Caro and Zdenko Kolacia. The work, a memorial to the writer and politician Vladimir Nazor, by Zdenek Kolacia, was of great interest to us. It uses basic, simple forms on a large scale, full of possible associations that resonate with the Croatian and Yugoslav tradition of outstanding and extraordinary concrete or stone sculptures. This tradition and monumentality amazes us. In our basic concept, we have changed Kolacio’s work – we will build a monument to the heroic efforts of local women. We have adapted the original work and are transforming it with a new message. The form changes in significance and becomes an autonomous work of art,” adds Ilona Németh.
The project has not yet been realized in Crikvenica, but it has been carefully documented, with partial mock-ups and 1:1 diagrams now undergoing a new transfer. “The concrete block with the exotic inscription “Ženama koje kuhaju sol” has found its temporary place on Olomouc’s Square of National Heroes… and Heroines. The amended name of the public space does not rewrite history, it only makes it more precise, updating its content through the generality of a monument that does not need a fixed location,” explains Mertová of the monument’s placement.
