The short film Letter to the School was created in collaboration between artist Eva Koťátková and director Jakub Kučera. Together with cinematographer Filip Rejč, they walked through the empty building of the elementary school Koťátková once attended.
Instead of students, the building was temporarily inhabited by creatures created by the artist, and the footage is accompanied by Koťátková’s gentle, sensitive, yet critical voiceover (letter to the school). It is complemented by the echoes of children’s voices and quotes from the school rules, serving as a reminder of how strongly the elementary school environment shaped us. What memories do we carry into adulthood from the spaces of gyms, locker rooms, cafeterias, desks, and “in front of blackboards”?
The video is accompanied by a text by Sára Märc, which further explores Eva Koťátková’s work.
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Paulo Freire, a teacher and philosopher whose work is one of the cornerstones of critical pedagogy and the pedagogy of the oppressed, insisted that the task of teachers is not “merely” to impart knowledge but to light the fires of critical thinking and awareness. According to Freire, the warmth of these inner forces will then lead students to develop the passion and energy needed to deal with the pressing social injustices of their time and prepare them to become active and fearless agents of change.
A similar process of stirring up critical thinking among gallery audiences can be felt in the work of artist Eva Koťátková. In her spatial works as well as her paper collages, textile objects, puppets, costumes, and performances, she reflects on the dominant relations and systems that we live in or grow up in, chipping away at their established order with her imaginative work. Indeed, the artist herself espouses the values of critical pedagogy in her educational practice. This began already during her time with the Institute of Anxiety (which she founded together with Zuzana Blochová, Edith Jeřábková and Barbora Kleinhamplová), in the Futuropolis project, and in a seminar called FOG: School of Ecological Imagination, which she prepared together with Lenka Vráblíková for the Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague in 2025.
She regularly exhibits in galleries in the Czech Republic and abroad, including the National Gallery Prague (2022 and 2025), the Venice Biennale (2024), Arter in Istanbul (2023), and Nottingham Contemporary (2023), and in 2022 she presented a solo exhibition at Meyer Riegger in Berlin. Despite the large number of exhibitions, one can spot an element of strong critical narrative running through her work, which transforms the common tools and systems that plant us in the world but at the same time often uproot us. She touches on themes such as the fragility of the relationship between humans and nature, through which she develops and highlights the formative status quo, presenting deeper and broader contexts that inspire the audience to unlearn the toxic, power-based bonds that we find ourselves in today.
The exhibitions and individual works are often materialized versions of intertwined stories that Koťátková explores in collaboration with other artists and creative collectives as well as groups of children or seniors. Storytelling is thus not only a way of sharing artistic practice but also a tool for creating and strengthening relationships (be it during the creative process or in everyday life). It’s as if the medium of collage, which is typical of Koťátková’s visual work, has been transformed into a cacophony of narratives that grow out of collective exploration and searching. It is thanks to their specific “narrativity” that the artist’s exhibitions form a coherent and powerful whole despite their diverse geopolitical locations.
The seemingly innocent but insidious question “What if?” opens up the many narratives on display as well as variations of possible answers, which are then left up to the audience. In a video profile for her exhibition How many giraffes are in the air we breathe? in Nottingham, the artist says: “Critical imagination and storytelling play a really crucial part in my artistic practice. […] For me, imagination is not a way how to escape to some faraway comfortable lands of dreaming - which can be very relaxing for a moment, but as soon as we are back, we are back to the same set of problems. […] I think [the question ‘What if?’] is something that should also be used in our everyday reality to ask: ‘What if we do that - what will change?’ Imagination is a very important phase in the process of changing something. So, to try to put together the set of options and also our visions - how we imagine the world to be, and why is it that it’s not like that, and what can we do to achieve that? Think for yourself, where are you in the story?”
Last but not least, Eva Koťátková’s countless artworks and exhibitions exude a sense of playfulness. And this is not only due to certain formal elements - such as bright colors, costumes, puppets, etc. - but mainly because of their playful nature. Play can be seen as a principle that introduces into our lives the processual exploration and examination of the surrounding world. Through play, we can deal with the world outside of the rational framework of perception and understanding - for example, through the possibilities of play for building speculative places that offer inspiration and reciprocity as well as versions of everyday stories in which we would (perhaps) like to live. Just as a game is, in principle, a multilayered space that requires cooperation, the artist’s gallery work echoes through many worlds, offering a space for the colorful narratives and realities that Koťátková builds through numerous collaborations and connections.
Sára Märc
