Černická searches for Olomouc history under the plaster of the MUO building
How to really know the history of the building you are walking through? One way is to look under its plaster. That’s what Michaela Černická does in her Documentary Probes, which she presents at the Olomouc Museum of Art as part of the SEFO 2024 Triennial.
With filigree precision, Černická has gone straight into the walls inside the Museum of Modern Art building. She created three probes – strips in which she both revealed matter and colour and, through inserted black and white images, recalled the building’s rich and complicated history. Over time, it has housed a monastery, a hospital, a prison, a sweatshop, a biograph, a bar, a variety show and a theatre.
However, the author does not work as a documenter of the place, but manifests herself as a creator of mystifying mockumentaries. She creates a new reality with the help of period photographs from the Taburin cabaret, the prison, cut-out photographs of the persecution of Olomouc citizens by the Nazis and the Communists, and footage from the film When the Strings Bark, which premiered at the local Central cinema on 28 October 1930. Her probes have a strong authentic feel, thanks to the scraped plaster left on the floor. Yet it is fiction. Černická takes it out of context and consciously manipulates Olomouc’s history layer by layer.
Through restoration probes, retouches and archival materials, the author reveals to the visitor the layers of the site’s history, mixing reality with artistic fiction. Two installations are located in the Navy and one of them is under the staircase near the ticket office of the Museum of Modern Art.
Michaela Černická has been developing the series of Documentary Probes since 2018. She has worked on the themes offered by the space she is in at the Via Art and Pragovka galleries in Prague and at the Mikulov Castle. Her Documentary Probe IV is currently on display at the SEFO 2024 Triennial at the Olomouc Museum of Art.
Translated with DeepL.com