💡 Šárka Koudelová is a Czech artist and curator based in Praha. Her artworks ponder time, its passage, and people’s non-linear perception of it. Some of her recurring visual motifs are earth minerals and their surface appearance; each layer formed after the passage of centuries. 

As a curator, she approaches exhibitions as living ecosystems, bringing together artists, objects, and ideas across different geographies and experiences. Her role is not simply to arrange exhibits, but to cultivate connections between the works of art, creating spaces where individual narratives settle into something larger, much like layers of sediment gradually forming a landscape.

In the Central European region, we tend to be kind of closed. But it is important to be in contact with other people in the world; it's a natural process of dialogue.

The word “Curation”, from Latin, means to take care of, and I tend to care a bit too much, but the only negative aspect of that is that it gets exhausting. Especially when taking care of people coming from other places in the world, such as the artists in residence that we host. The personal contact is so important since they have moved here to be part of this project. I have reflected a lot on these burgeoning relationships with artists. In my essay, “Temporary closeness.” I explore how I develop a very close and personal relationship with the artists in residence, but it's such a short time, only two to three months. Very often, when creating art, you touch on very intimate things, and for those two months, you end up developing a very intense emotional relationship with someone.

The most effective way for me to recover is when I create.

My painting method is very slow, so I need to concentrate. It often feels like “clausura,” from Latin, like the solitude of monks when they want to go through mental processes or they want to figure out the relationship with something bigger than themselves. It is in this type of solitude that I can recover.

However, I have been finding it difficult to find such times lately because I have a 5-year-old at home. I find it hard to find time to concentrate on just work; finding a balance has been difficult, so I do a lot of work at night.

But working mothers, and more specifically working mothers in art, should be their own separate set of interviews.

As for my process, I started painting in thin layers during my 2nd or 3rd year in the academy. These layers then developed into painting hyper-realistic minerals and their layers. When painting, I always think:

“In thousands and thousands of years, we will just be a thin layer of sediment.”

I create movement with a thin brush to build my motif in layers. I would say it's a conceptual way of painting in that I build time with each of my paintings.

Fátima Leal: Any last thoughts you might want to share on your exhibition or artistic practice?

Šárka Koudelová:  

As a society, we perceive nature as something disconnected from us, just a source of anything we might need, and we fail to see that we are part of nature.

This is also the basis of the group projects I organize and curate. I take inspiration from the essay “Bodies of water.” This text takes a philosophical stand on how our bodies are created from mostly water, so we should care for the bodies of water around us because we are one of them.

Thus, the group exhibitions that I organize are called “Bodies of Dust”, focusing on the solid material on Earth, because we are also created from minerals and chemical particles we can find on our planet and in space.

I encourage others to recognize that we are constantly and relentlessly pushed to seek something new. A new experience, a new impulse, something newer and shinier. But we should stop and give ourselves a moment to experience everything on a deeper level.

Truly digest ideas and live with them. Calm ourselves down and try to deeply understand something.