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Four years´ vacation

Four years´ vacation
Four years´ vacation
Four years´ vacation
Four years´ vacation
Four years´ vacation
Trvání: 
2. 4. 2010 - 28. 4. 2010

Project of five FAMU graduates from their maternity holidays.

I have been given an interesting task.I have to write editorial to the exhibition of five Prague FAMU graduates, who are at the moment on maternity leave or they are just giving birth to their babies…

My personal experience is very different from the current way of life of these women who seem to balance on the narrow but strong line between professional self-fulfilment and taking care of basic family weal, eventually on the line between (healthy) scepticism and energized activity, or between frustration and fulfilment.As evidenced by their own statements, they find themselves in some kind of interphase of return to the avant-symbolistic phase of the world and communication, where they lead their children, whose specific inwardness is just growing up. Therefore, they are often confronted with „abjective”   phenomena, which are phenomena that precede the rational and symbolic order of the adult world. It is often a sort of descent into spot formlessness, attacks of nausea, violation of readable distance between subject and object. Linguist and psychoanalytic Julia Kristeva assumes, that draggy order precedes objective situation and it´s some kind of chaos or penetration of human, animal or natural and cultural element, there are no straight rules, it is some kind of original unstructured substance of the world. Tie and separation of child from its mother is according to psychoanalytics one of main examples of insurrection of symbolistic order from objective indistinction. It is not only child who is involved in this proceed, equally mother (sometimes does father too) is involved, who respects natural evolution of her child, whose interconnexion with mother doesn´t end with birth. Many photos of these authors reflects this situation - some kind of regress to less structured or chaotic forms, which can end up repulsively and disappointingly in its tactile potential (often it is not long distanced visual phenomena, but unpleasantly close relicts of touch - hand prints, splodges on slobber-jacket, dirt behind nails etc)The same with reflection of „uncanonical” pregnant-body deformation or view into unlovely intimacy can be unpleasant and I am not sure if just for male spectator. This abjective character of maternity leave is the basic deposit of these photographs. We can see expressive contrast between maternity construction and family idyll as seen in mass media, where smiles, cuddling, sweet smells, softness and other delineations of happiness and security. On these pictures you can see look behind illusory curtain, where everything else can be seen, except easygoing goodliness.

Václav Hájek