“Historically,” Tallová said in an interview in 2025, “the female body has been perceived more as an object than the subject of its own history. It bears traces of pressure, deformation, and constant efforts to conform to a defined norm.”[1] Her collages and assemblages speak precisely to this condition. They are inhabited by deformed female bodies that nevertheless must maintain their composure: female workers, athletes, and models whose achievements and lives were excluded from the male-dominated canon of modernism and postwar modernism.
The artist allows female bodies to merge with all manner of architecture designed and built by men. The bodies themselves assume the function of columns and ornaments, or become architecture in their own right. In one work, legs in silk stockings and patent leather shoes emerge from one of the most famous buildings of Italian Fascism, the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, inaugurated in 1940, appearing as frivolous as figures in a cabaret performance from the Weimar era. In other works, women must literally bear the weight of history. Young female gymnasts form the foundation of towers made from ancient temples or recreate Stalinist monuments dedicated to heroic figures.
This idea is fully articulated in the installation Fragility of Caryatid (2025). The work consists of a group of bent fragments of Ionic columns into which poster-like images of ancient female sculptures, mostly headless torsos, have been inserted. Through this, Tallová refers to the gender metaphors embedded in ancient architecture and sculpture. Caryatids are female figures used in place of columns or pillars. Unlike male Atlantes, who appear to struggle beneath the weight of architectural elements, caryatids are expected to carry the load gracefully on their heads. They embody a disciplined femininity that is not permitted to reveal its effort. In Tallová’s interpretation, they have disappeared: the columns are bent, damaged, or broken.
[1] Lucia Tallová, interview by Jan Kudrna, in Lucia Tallová: I Wish I Was Made of Stone, exh. cat. (Olomouc: Telegraph Gallery, 2025), 39.
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“Historically,” Tallová said in an interview in 2025, “the female body has been perceived more as an object than the subject of its own history. It bears traces of pressure, deformation, and constant efforts to conform to a defined norm.”[1] Her collages and assemblages speak precisely to this condition. They are inhabited by deformed female bodies that nevertheless must maintain their composure: female workers, athletes, and models whose achievements and lives were excluded from the male-dominated canon of modernism and postwar modernism.
The artist allows female bodies to merge with all manner of architecture designed and built by men. The bodies themselves assume the function of columns and ornaments, or become architecture in their own right. In one work, legs in silk stockings and patent leather shoes emerge from one of the most famous buildings of Italian Fascism, the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, inaugurated in 1940, appearing as frivolous as figures in a cabaret performance from the Weimar era. In other works, women must literally bear the weight of history. Young female gymnasts form the foundation of towers made from ancient temples or recreate Stalinist monuments dedicated to heroic figures.
This idea is fully articulated in the installation Fragility of Caryatid (2025). The work consists of a group of bent fragments of Ionic columns into which poster-like images of ancient female sculptures, mostly headless torsos, have been inserted. Through this, Tallová refers to the gender metaphors embedded in ancient architecture and sculpture. Caryatids are female figures used in place of columns or pillars. Unlike male Atlantes, who appear to struggle beneath the weight of architectural elements, caryatids are expected to carry the load gracefully on their heads. They embody a disciplined femininity that is not permitted to reveal its effort. In Tallová’s interpretation, they have disappeared: the columns are bent, damaged, or broken.
[1] Lucia Tallová, interview by Jan Kudrna, in Lucia Tallová: I Wish I Was Made of Stone, exh. cat. (Olomouc: Telegraph Gallery, 2025), 39.
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
Between new beginnings and decline