Pictorial Atlas of a Girl Who Cut a Library into Pieces

Artist's book

“Pictorial Atlas of a Girl Who Cut a Library into Pieces,” Eva Kotátková’s most ambitious publication to date, reflects her obsession with reshaping and hijacking pre-existing photographic images. Divided in two volumes, the first volume of this publication presents 300 recently realized drawings and collages, a new body of work that has been compiled from an imaginary schoolbook from the 1980s (when the artist was growing up under the totalitarian Communist regime). The second volume, the textual part of the book, is the outcome of three years of research through archives: 22 sets of regulations issued by public institutions (psychiatric hospitals, special-needs schools, house rules, cemeteries, orphanages, etc.) from the 1970s through to the end of the 1980s in Communist Czechoslovakia. These sources reflect the politics of the authoritarian regime and raise educational and social issues.

Eva Kotátková (b. 1982, Prague) studied at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, the Prague Academy of Applied Arts, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the Akademie Bildende Kunst Wien between 2002 and 2007. In 2007, at the age of 25, she became the youngest person to be awarded the Jindrich Chalupecky Award for young artists in the Czech Republic. Kotátková exhibits extensively internationally and in the Czech Republic, and her work is included in numerous private and public collections.

Published within the context of the “tranzit” series edited by Vít Havránek, focusing on Central and Eastern European artists.