Tallová’s work confronts viewers with a sense of transience. It presents the remnants of lives once lived: pieces of furniture with which someone once furnished a home, books that someone once read and collected, objects that once belonged to someone, anonymous photographs that were once personal memories. These are dreams of progress and the future, of which only ruins remain.
“I rediscover ancient civilisations,” says Tallová, “and build utopian worlds that then fall prey to destruction once again to destruction. After many unsuccessful attempts throughout history, these unstable structures collapse. Human existence is predestined to perish. It seems to have lost the ability to function within the current system and the dystopian vision of the future. The body succumbs to time, to ageing and finitude.”[1] This may not sound hopeful. Yet the statement offers a realistic description of a state of constant historical change and uncertainty, of repeated new beginnings that have become an everyday reality for many people.
Tallová’s artistic practice, writes Sam Bardaouil, “emerges from a specific geography: Central and Eastern Europe, a landscape shaped by the collapse of communism and the ongoing archaeology of its ruins. The flea market and the second-hand shop—sites where she discovers her objects—are not neutral reservoirs. They are the informal museums of a region where the circulation of fragments testifies to the discontinuities of history.”[2] In this sense, Tallová “stages not merely the memory of objects but the condition of a society where memory itself is unstable, fractured, suspended between regimes.”
Although the exhibition repeatedly refers to socialist culture and its diverse currents, styles, and ideologies, it is not exclusively concerned with a critical or nostalgic reassessment of the past. Nor is it about drawing comparisons between East and West. Rather, it focuses on an in-between state: rupture, uncertainty, and unresolved tensions that only become visible and tangible through collage and recombination. Against the monolithic narratives that allow no breaks or ambiguity, Tallová sets something fragile, fractured, and assembled: the utopia of a “feminine” world in which domination and power are no longer central, and in which everything exists in a state of interdependence.
[1] Ibid. [2] Sam Bardaouil, “Lucia Tallová: A Dramaturgy of Hesitation,” in Lucia Tallová: I Wish I Was Made of Stone, exh. cat. (Olomouc: Telegraph Gallery, 2025), 75.
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Note: The audio transcription is voiced by an AI.
Tallová’s work confronts viewers with a sense of transience. It presents the remnants of lives once lived: pieces of furniture with which someone once furnished a home, books that someone once read and collected, objects that once belonged to someone, anonymous photographs that were once personal memories. These are dreams of progress and the future, of which only ruins remain.
“I rediscover ancient civilisations,” says Tallová, “and build utopian worlds that then fall prey to destruction once again to destruction. After many unsuccessful attempts throughout history, these unstable structures collapse. Human existence is predestined to perish. It seems to have lost the ability to function within the current system and the dystopian vision of the future. The body succumbs to time, to ageing and finitude.”[1] This may not sound hopeful. Yet the statement offers a realistic description of a state of constant historical change and uncertainty, of repeated new beginnings that have become an everyday reality for many people.
Tallová’s artistic practice, writes Sam Bardaouil, “emerges from a specific geography: Central and Eastern Europe, a landscape shaped by the collapse of communism and the ongoing archaeology of its ruins. The flea market and the second-hand shop—sites where she discovers her objects—are not neutral reservoirs. They are the informal museums of a region where the circulation of fragments testifies to the discontinuities of history.”[2] In this sense, Tallová “stages not merely the memory of objects but the condition of a society where memory itself is unstable, fractured, suspended between regimes.”
Although the exhibition repeatedly refers to socialist culture and its diverse currents, styles, and ideologies, it is not exclusively concerned with a critical or nostalgic reassessment of the past. Nor is it about drawing comparisons between East and West. Rather, it focuses on an in-between state: rupture, uncertainty, and unresolved tensions that only become visible and tangible through collage and recombination. Against the monolithic narratives that allow no breaks or ambiguity, Tallová sets something fragile, fractured, and assembled: the utopia of a “feminine” world in which domination and power are no longer central, and in which everything exists in a state of interdependence.
[1] Ibid.
[2] Sam Bardaouil, “Lucia Tallová: A Dramaturgy of Hesitation,” in Lucia Tallová: I Wish I Was Made of Stone, exh. cat. (Olomouc: Telegraph Gallery, 2025), 75.
Further artworks from this exhibition
Deutsche Bank “Artist of the Year” 2026
Lucia Tallová: Moving Clouds
Deutsche Bank “Artist of the Year” 2026
Fragile worlds made of paper
Material and memory
Male fantasies, female bodies