Simona Gottierová

The spoon in my hand is your mouth

Exhibition production: Diana Kakara Dobrescu, Igor Gottier, Alžbeta Halušková, Denisa Juhaszová

Technical support: Adam Alezár

At the heart of Simona Gottierová’s practice lies the urge to bring the invisible, everyday actions and gestures of caretaking visible, tangible and present. She achieves this with a sensitive approach towards materials, creating objects, drawings and installations that reference daily actions, repetition and the monotony embedded in our lives and  every caretaking endeavor. In Gottierová’s way of thinking, it is these repetitions that constitute life, with all its banality, absurdity, messiness and beauty. This routine is not necessarily something negative: the artist sees it as a source of inspiration, reassurance, encounter (with the matter, with the body) while also acknowledging the frustration / contradiction that arise when one fully gives oneself to someone or something in the process of care. How can you remain yourself and not lose yourself in the process, yet still dedicate your time, energy, feelings to someone /something else? Through various  embodied encounters with the matter, Gottierová invites the viewer to enter this tactile and emphatic space, where the relationship between the visible and invisible bodies, materials and stories are constantly entangled with one another.

When situating Simona Gottierová’s practice within the discourse around care, it is important to see how it is connected to projects that do not focus on a specific topic or story (like childcare or elder care) but rather consider care as a way of working (as an artist, as a human being), as a methodology, as a constant definition of the self in relation to others. This is the way of living “fully”, as there is no other option. The works in the exhibition highlight ambivalent feelings like frustration or self-sacrifice, as well as positions of vulnerability, empathy and openness towards other beings.

Gottierová’s works do not merely seek to engage us intellectually; rather, they avoid being too conceptual, addressing the viewer solely through their brains. In all of her works, Gottierová aims to affect the body – the body that is present in the space, which gets into interaction with the artworks, and that contains feelings and emotions when encountering the exhibition. And the body which is at the core of every relationship. As I mentioned before, Gottierová does not shy away from contradictory or ambivalent feelings: she is interested in mapping out the spectrum of these emotions, which appear through the processes and different phases of care. When observing her works, these emotions can indeed happen simultaneously, being present in our bodies through discomfort, unease, or on the other hand through calmness and closeness.

When entering this exhibition, the viewer already experiences a bodily sensation: passing through Gottierová’s textile installation – which evokes feelings of transitioning through something, transforming into something – one encounters a series of installations and drawings appear in the space. With the usage of everyday objects, these on one hand emphasise Šopa Gallery’s original function – as an apartment where people, families lived – but with the abstraction and non-figurativity of the drawings, it takes the topic to a more universal and accessible level. These drawings, which sometimes contain the artist’s fragmentary sentences (or poems) appear as a constant search for the other and the other within ourselves.

The artworks offer us different perspectives and viewpoints (e. g. bending down / lowering oneself to see the works) and create tension between contrasting materials (like the softness of the textile and the roughness of the icy salt). Yet they also ground the visitor in the space, inviting them to stay there for a while, highlighting the power of staying, of resting – looking at it as a radical act. Within the universe of Gottierová, same or similar objects appear, disappear and then reappear, each time in a different way, yet containing traces of their previous adjustments and histories. Thus, for each exhibition, a new constellation of artworks emerge, yet the artist plays with notions of repetition and monotony on purpose. Moving away from the trend of always creating something new, she experiments with humble gestures, and minimal interventions, appropriating well-known objects and putting them in a different light.

Flóra Gadó

Simona Gottierová (*1991) initially studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava in the jewelry studio, and later in the painting studio. She creates objects that expand into multimedia installations with performative potential. She is interested in seemingly banal situations, in which we, in the midst of everyday life, experience our existence across physical and psychological layers. Simona responds to contemporary phenomena such as technologisation or disconnection (from oneself, the body, relationships, the environment) by bringing forth the potential for empathy, closeness, and presence. Since 2019, together with Dana Tomečková and Martina Mäsiarová, she has formed the collective 1+1+1+1=1, and last year, they published a book. She currently lives in her great-grandparents’ house in Špania Dolina, where she focuses on her work and regularly travels for friendships and creative stimuli both in Slovakia and abroad.

The exhibitions of this gallery are supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council.

The Slovak Arts Council is the main partner of the project.

The project is also financially supported by City Košice.