NEW FOLK

#Artistwor(l)d: Jarmila Mitríková & Dávid Demjanovič share their inspiration and the creation process for the realization of their new works through a takeover.

Since when we started to collaborate – it wasn’t planned, but somehow it happened – we first think about the subject and the themes of our works: we look for inspiration in vintage painted advertisements, aesthetics of postcards, souvenirs, naive painting, historical illustration, children books.  

Inspiration sources for our ceramics are craft and sculpture traditions , but also folk sculptures or amateur restoration projects.

We work together to create new mythologies with new etnography. We draw on the past by studying historical materials that we arbitrarily interpret, change, and supplement with elements of supernatural and mystification. The sources are superstition narratives, ethnographic sources, legends or hoaxes and conspiracies.

During the lockdown restrictions our life didn’t change a lot: we spend time at home, but we’ve been still allowed to go to our studio or cycling in the forests around city of Košice, Slovakia where we live and work.

In the most recent drawings we show themes related to a pandemic. Hygiene and anti-epidemiological measures by individuals or society and the vision of post-pandemic life. We are imagining folklore of the future. Designing new folk costume and speculative ethnography. Carousel and autodrome for single person. Social distancing. Modern hermitism and isolation for self-improvement. Society pressure to continually acquire new knowledge and skills even during a pandemic. Exercise at home and home workout. Loneliness as the new normal inspired by Japanese phenomenon of hikikomori, people living for years without social contact.

We currently featured in an institutional show in Košice East Slovak Gallery, where is exhibited our ceramic installation Cremation Ceremony, 2015, that was just acquired for the museum permanent collection.

In 2020, we want to continue to draw more and create new ceramic statues and objects that will thematically touch on superstitions, traditions, religiosity, spirituality, mysticism and their interaction with the political ideologies of the 20th century in our geopolitical space.