Welcome back to artist Radoslava Hrabovská (2:2), who returnswith three wonderfully textured Soft Labyrinths fashioned from used materials: Jazyk (Language), Mŕtve Duše (úryvok) (Dead Souls (Passage)), and Wall of Tea. The first two are made from fabric scraps and material cut from a textbook in Slovak, the last from used tea-bags. They represent labyrinths that face humanity: language, lies, and waste, and somehow they make these things seem manageable. She’s written a very illuminating companion text for us.
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In her own words:
Radoslava (Radka) Hrabovská comes from a small village in Slovakia called Bojničky. Her desire to travel and explore foreign lands has been fulfilled in her own way, even though she was born in Bojničky, lives in Bojničky and will probably die in Bojničky. She moved up to the second hill in the village and found a job 6 km from her native village in the town of Hlohovec. If traveling was her first dream, her second was to become a mother. She now has 4 sons and is also a high school teacher, where students sometimes call her mom.
She graduated from the School of Education, Department of Art, where she had great teachers and was even discovered by sculptors Viliam and Marcela Loviska, studying privately in their studio. Her children are the inspiration that runs around her home, popping up frequently in her artwork, along with all her dreams and unrealized thoughts and desires.
Here’s a little taste of Radka’s work from our last issue, where it was part of a ten-page article. This work is very touching and unusual; I always enjoy the humanity that she puts into her work. This is Time for Tea, which synthesizes Chinese and western connotations as it fuses memory and used teabags to make something personal and universal.
