Maud Kotasová
The Darkness We Talk From

Maud Kotasová, a distinctive artist of the middle generation, likes to be inspired by the raw form of real life. She engages with found texts, creates photographs that she copies onto objects, or transforms them artistically through embroidery or engraving. An important part of her work is the theme of her several-year-long journey through Europe and her relationship with her Catalan partner, who is a truck driver. One of the initial works reflecting the artist's nomadic life is an engraving on the sheet metal of the back of the cab of a Renault Magnum tractor, entitled Personal Matrix. Maud Kotas's work largely paraphrases the authentic creativity of truck drivers who decorate their vehicles in various ways. She takes inspiration from her travels, her contact with Catalan culture and the life of ordinary people. Her themes are linked by the experience of a strong love relationship. This brings a universal, universally understandable level to her works, which allows her to reach a wider audience. The sensuality of her work is also enhanced by her thoughtful use of contrast and paradox, for example when she applies the delicate handmade technique of embroidery, considered typically feminine, to car body parts or, for example, garbage cans. The robustness of her exceptional work can be illustrated, for example, by the work Hell Is a Material, which she realized at the Sandwich II gallery in Bucharest. There, in 2022, she embroidered the walls of a metal container with motifs of hell taken from a fresco in a nearby church. She perforates the materials for the embroidery with a drill. In the halls of the House of Arts she will exhibit a new series of embroidered objects inspired by the modest working environment of factory workers.

photo: Michaela Dvořáková