Shopping is my hobby

Czech photographer Alena Kotzmannová entered the European art scene with pressing themes of identity, desire, distance and closeness, which are present in all of her projects such as Někdo ti volá/Somebody’s Calling you, Dočasná osoba/Temporary person, Blízká tma/Close Dark, Station to Station. She was nominated for the national Jindřich Chalupecký Award in 2010 and her work dealing with the theme of the sea was exhibited in the Centre for Contemporary Art DOX.  Her work entitled, “Shopping is my hobby”, looks into identity in connection with the history of the Czech nation and the everyday banality of the consumer existence. “For the exhibition “Artwork in Public Spaces”, I produced a poster of a woman carrying a plastic bag with the shadowy image of the statue of St. Wenceslas from Wenceslas Square in Prague,” explains Kotzmannová. “The statue is a symbol of Czech nationality. (The silhouette of a Czech patron is cut out from cardboard and visible through the semi-transparent side of a plastic shopping bag, so it is made without a digital manipulation). This work refers to what I would call the ‘shopping fever’ that started right after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. At that time there was big shopping boom, and a lot of new supermarkets and centres were built. It is complete with the subversive subtext that everything can be bought. These posters were installed in spaces for advertisements at several tram stops in Prague.”