Exhibition / FRAGILITY IN THE EVERYDAY
When we came up with the theme of Fragility for 2022 in 2021, we had no idea that it would take on a completely different and difficult meaning from 24 February 2022. One that we never wanted to imagine. The war in our vicinity and in our cultural environment has both shattered our sense of security and laid bare the fragility of our existence, so sharply tested by the circumstances of the pandemic and the climate crisis. Since then, we have shaken off a little, but almost daily we are confronted with human stupidity, lies, misinformation, news from the battlefields, civilian suffering. Social networks and many political ‘elites’ escalate mutual hostility, our society is still unable to truly respect human rights for all equally. We have had the first fatal terrorist attack on defenceless young people. A little too much for one year…
And into that FRAGILITY. It is very important for us at this time. We reflect on it especially through impermanence, transformation, but also our “breaking down” in the everyday and our re-positioning. We perceive fragility through feeling and understanding. Mindfulness. Its gentleness and delicacy is precious. We perceive it in many layers. It does not push itself anywhere. And only we can decide what we will be and what the world around us will be like. In contemporary design, it takes on different meanings.
The main exhibition at the Mirbach Palace will present a selection of works by contemporary designers from several countries. Their approaches are varied, with themes linking their work with materials, experimental thinking with regard to sustainability, civic activism, and the poetry of the everyday, interpenetrating and connecting with processes from nature. We bring them together in one temporary installation to communicate with each other. Not only with each other, but also with the space of the rococo palace and the baroque art collection, and of course with you, the audience. It will be a moment – a space – fragilely anchored for a moment in time.
View of the exhibition, photo: archive of BADW.
Štefan Sekáč, photo: archive of BADW.
Thus That, photo: archive of BADW.