Meet the artist: Lucia Nimcová
Join us for a virtual meeting with the Slovak artist Lucia Nimcová. Nimcová, who also participates in the exhibition, talks about her work and is interviewed by the curator Eda Tuulberg. The event is part of the public programme of the exhibition Archaeologists of Memory: Vitols Contemporary Art Collection, currently on display at the Kumu Art Museum.
Nimcová’s talk centres on two projects, Exercise (2007) and Khroniky (2014–2016). The humorous film Exercise, displayed at the exhibition, shows people performing the exercises they remember from the communist past, when “morning gymnastics” was part of citizens’ daily routine. The work demonstrates a discordance between the collective history of body politics and individual body memories. For Khroniky, Nimcová and the sound artist Sholto Dobie gathered an archive of recordings capturing the way of life of the ethnic minorities inhabiting western Ukraine. The artists describe their work as a folk opera: a collection of songs, stories, music, performance and field recordings: a cross between ethnographic fieldwork and musical theatre. Nimcová is mainly interested in songs which describe – in tragic, brutal or comic ways – domestic abuse, murder, conflict, sex, love and hate. According to the artist, she wanted to show that the alternative folklore of the region: hard mountain rap, vintage feminism and filthy Karpaty hip hop, is still alive and relevant.
Lucia Nimcová is a photographer and film-maker. She lives and works in Jerusalem and Humenné. She is drawn to the complex, controversial, tragic, humorous and sometimes absurd social and cultural relations that make up the everyday reality of Eastern Europe. Her work combines the collective and personal experiences of different individuals and communities, synthesising photography, video, performance and sound. Several of her projects focus on the lives and destinies of women in post-1989 Central and Eastern Europe.
Nimcová’s works have been acquired for the collections of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Mudam Luxembourg, the Slovak National Gallery, the Vitols Contemporary, the Bratislava City Gallery and private collections around the world. The artist’s webpage is https://www.luco.sk/.
Archaeologists of Memory is the first exhibition to offer in-depth insight into the Vitols Contemporary Art Collection, one of the most interesting private contemporary art collections in the Baltic region. The collection focuses on Eastern and Central European contemporary art and features almost 1,000 works from more than 150 artists. On display at the exhibition are artworks from Latvian, Romanian, Polish, Russian, Czech, Lithuanian, Estonian, Georgian, Slovak, Albanian and Ukrainian artists.