Bezdomovec/Homeless

Kateřina Šedá is one of the most interesting artist connecting closely with social issues in the arts. She designs her artwork as “encounters” or “moments of sociability” and her aims are “to make people communicate and collaborate”. She works with people from her neighborhood, family or “common people” from villages and small sites. She lives and works in Brno-Líšeň. In this piece, the artist is pictured dressed up in a coat for a homeless man. She met him near a supermarket where he lived on salami leftovers which he scratched out of salami skin. Katka and this man made friends. It was the first of her “larger” socio/art projects. She did not think about it in terms of “making or creating Art” at all. Her project was an attempt to utilize the salami skin and turn it into something useful — something that the homeless man lacked and needed. It is important to say that Seda respects her subject’s habits; she does not want to change his lifestyle and she is not doing any kind of social work. Seda just visited this man and they talked. Close communication and respect for a person who is radically different, one stigmatized by poverty, is an experience of “identity-at-a-distance” which, in fact, is a part of  understanding who we are. The coat, a belt and a bag are the project’s outcomes – Seda’s work speaks to the complexities and simplicities of social acceptance.