“How can an individual change or subvert established societal norms and conventions, or even escape them? This question seems to be the key theme in the work of Jana Kapelová. In her artworks there is interplay of institutional critique, which reflects her cultural and political involvement in the field of art, and rather a philosophical concern for the options an individual has in order to bypass or transform a (dysfunctional) social system and thereby arrive at self-realization. At the same time, there is a question of the role the art itself has in all of this.”
(T. Stejskalová)
Jana Kapelová (*1982, Trnava) graduated with a Masters’s degree at the Department of Fine Art Education of the Faculty of Education, Trnava University, in the Studio of Intermedia under the supervision of doc. Miroslav Nicz at the Faculty of Fine Arts AKU in Banská Bystrica and with a doctoral degree in the Studio of Video and Multimedia at VŠVU in Bratislava under the supervision of doc. Anna Daučíková.
She is an artist, cultural activist and publicist. She has co-created the “Hore bez” programme (together with Omar Mirza) and has co-founded the Slovak branch of the international project Artyčok.TV (together with Peter Barényi and Katarína Slaninová), which she coordinates. She is a member of the “Dvadsať rokov od Nežnej neprebehlo” (Twenty Years after the Velvet Revolution Didn’t Pass) initiative. These days she works as an assistant in the Studio of New Media II. at AVU in Prague. She lives and works in Prague and Bratislava.
