Mária Janušová
Bereich: Kuratorin, Theorie
Key Facts
Nationalität
SlowakeiBereich
Kuratorin, TheorieWohnort
BratislavaEmpfehlende Institution
tranzit.org/ERSTE StiftungZeitraum
Jänner 2020 - Februar 2020Mária Janušová is a curator and art historian based in Bratislava, Slovakia. In 2016, she graduated with Master´s Degree in art history from Comenius University in Bratislava. Currently she is a PhD. student at the Department of Theory and History of Art at Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. During 2019, she is a member of HIT Gallery team which prepares a year-long program titled Golden Times for a regional museum of art - the Jozef Kollár Gallery in Banská Štiavnica. Between 2017 and 2019, she worked as a curator in Nitra Gallery. From 2014 to 2016, she was a gallery assistant at Krokus Gallery in Bratislava. In 2015, she received the Scholarship of Radislav Matuštík – the prize for young curators awarded by Bratislava City Gallery.
In her curatorial practice she is interested in making exhibitions as a kind of environment with a specific architecture and sensitive composition of exhibited artworks. Within her research she is focused on art institutions, museum studies, critical theory of museum, institutional critique and post-colonial discourse aimed at the situation in post-socialist countries.
Curatorial projects (selection)
2019
GENESIS, project Golden Times, Jozef Kollár Gallery, Banská Štiavnica, SK
The Harvest – Agricultural motives in Nitra Gallery´s Collection, Nitra Gallery, Nitra, SK
Alexandra Barth: Evidence of Absence, HotDock Project Space, Bratislava, SK
The Space of a Liberated Time – the series of exhibitions of local amateur artists (with co-curator Lucia Tkáčová), project Golden Times, Jozef Kollár Gallery, Banská Štiavnica, SK
2018
Ján Kekeli: Vague Script, Nitra Gallery, Nitra, SK
Constructive Lyric, Gallery MEDIUM, Bratislava, SK
#OK – XII. Triennial of Small Object and Drawing (with co-curator Erik Vilím), Jozef Kollár Gallery, Banská Štiavnica, SK
I am not here, I am in Arcadia, Nitra Gallery, Nitra, SK
Ján Kekeli: Small Scene, Phoinix, Bratislava, SK
2017
Peter Mezei & Juraj Toman: Then and There, Nitra Gallery, Nitra, SK
Constructive Lyric, City Gallery of Pilsen, Pilsen, CZ
During my residency I would like to focus on further development of my PhD. research which refers to the museums of art in the former Eastern Bloc and methods of their transformation after 1989. The aim of my thesis is to point out the ways of building and evolving own identity of the museum of art in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe which is related to its communist background. The residency at MuseumsQuartier in Vienna can offer me time for concentrated and intensive research. I am planning to visit museums and academic environment and meet professionals that are also dealing with institutional research, so they can be very helpful for my thesis and for extending my horizon. Alongside of the institutions, I would like to map Viennese art scene, non-profit galleries, meet artists, curators and art critics as well. I would also like to take advantage of my residency for visiting libraries and studying literature for my research that is not available in Slovakia.
I was on residency at MQ in the beginning of 2020, in January and February, at the time before the pandemic when everything was normal.
I used my residency for a further development of my PhD thesis which is focused on the art museums in the former Eastern Bloc, methods of their transformation after 1989 and new curatorial approaches dealing with political and social changes in the countries of Central, South-East and Eastern Europe.
During my residency, I mainly studied publications and texts related to my research. I visited some libraries in Vienna like in the Erste Foundation or the Mumok, which offered me many relevant sources. I also regularly visited the Kontakt Collection where I searched for some art videos which I would like to present in Bratislava in the next year.
During my time in Vienna, I have started a collaboration with Austrian curator Barbara Horvath for the exhibition in the Kunstverein Eisenstadt which will be held in January 2021.
Besides that, I visited a lot of exhibitions and discovered several art spaces which I did not know before. I met artists and other art professionals, too and I got to know the Viennese scene. Additionally, I discovered the city from a new perspective and literally fell in love with Vienna. I really enjoyed the residency and I can only recommend it!