ULTRASUPERNATURAL
27 May – 15 Nov 2020
We’re open to all, now also you
DOX Centre for Contemporary Art
Poupětova 1, Praha 7
Show on map
Exhibition is extended to 15 November 2020.
ULTRASUPERNATURAL is the culmination of a project spanning more than twenty years, undertaken by artists Barbora Šlapetová and Lukáš Rittstein. Barbora and Lukáš have devoted their lives to studying the Yali Mek, the last Papuan indigenous tribe. Since 1997, they have undertaken 11 expeditions to the remote regions of Western Papua and Papua-New Guinea, studying the local tribes and their culture.
The skills and experiences of Papuan cannibal tribes have been documented by anthropologists, missionaries and geologists, but never through the eyes of artists. The themes explored by Barbora and Lukáš are closer in scope to anthropology and ethnology than to art, and yet their approach is artistic in nature. Through artistic metaphor, they seek to express the miracle of an encounter between two vastly different mentalities, divided by a gap in time.
The artists have transformed their study of the once cannibalistic tribes in their natural, swiftly disappearing habitat into a vast array of drawings, videos, objects, photographs and monumental sculptures which are all part of an integral whole.
Barbora Šlapetová and Lukáš Rittstein have already created several exhibitions for the DOX Centre. Shortly after the Centre’s opening, the artistic duo presented the first part of their extraordinary project, entitled Manop, The Final First (2009), followed by Everything Is Different in 2015.
ULTRASUPERNATURAL attempts to put the artists’ vast knowledge and experience into an entirely new context, as a symbolic culmination, reflected in a mysterious smoke ritual they have undergone during their last visit to Western Papua in 2017.
Exhibition created by: Leoš Válka, Michaela Šilpochová, Otto M. Urban
Exhibition Partners
Keep exploring
Commander
The unique production combines a physical theatre performance with live music and a film starring child actors of Farm in the Cave studio to communicate an urgent, yet widely overlooked, topic – the online radicalisation of youth.
Thin Skin
A performance by established circus acrobat Eliška Brtnická and her hypnotic production Thin Skin at the interface of movement installation and contemporary circus in the spaces of the DOX Centre.
Thin Skin
A performance by established circus acrobat Eliška Brtnická and her hypnotic production Thin Skin at the interface of movement installation and contemporary circus in the spaces of the DOX Centre.
Commander
The unique production combines a physical theatre performance with live music and a film starring child actors of Farm in the Cave studio to communicate an urgent, yet widely overlooked, topic – the online radicalisation of youth.
Czech Hero
Satirical physical theater production Czech Hero by the theatre ensemble Farm in the Cave, which focuses on the contemporary and pressing topic of disinformation and political marketing. Movement, words, live music, dynamics, energy, exaggeration. All this in the DOX+ hall.
Franz Kafka's Drawings
Eminent Kafka scholar Andreas Kilcher will present drawings by Franz Kafka discovered in 2019 in the context of Kafka's biography and art history as well as his literary work and his impressive book, which has been translated into ten languages to date.
Klangforum Wien II.
The second evening of the Prague Offspring series presents premieres of five new works by Czech and Slovak composers written for Klangforum Wien, commemorates the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, and climaxes with the Czech premiere of Nether, a dazzling work by the composer-in-residence Rebecca Saunders.
Klangforum Wien I.
For the third time, the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art will be the venue for Prague Offspring, a Prague Spring Festival concert format dedicated to the latest in contemporary music. This will be last time that Klangforum Wien will be appearing in the role of ensemble-in-residence.
Contemporary writer in Europe
How do contemporary authors perceive their position in a Europe that is being transformed under the increasing influence of populists and threatened by the Russian imperial war in Ukraine? What to write about, and how, when facing the diminishing ability of readers to focus on extended texts, as well as decreasing book sales?
