We are looking forward to the artist Habima Fuchs, who will show us her new film EQUINOX. The screening together with an introduction by the artist is expected to take place on October 17 at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.
About Habima Fuchs and her movie:
EQUINOX
A screening of Habima Fuchs art film EQUINOX, 2022, (23 min.) with an introduction about the creative process.
„The nature of the universe, which holds
the center still and moves all else around it,
begins here as if from its turning-post.“
(Dante Alighieri, Canto 27, 106-117)
Habima Fuchs evocative art film captures the world at the symbolic equinox. It is set in Slunakov near Olomouc, Czech Republic and was produced as part of the Home and World programme of the Olomouc Museum of Art – Central European Forum. (https://muo.cz)
Habima Fuchs is a Czech visual artist whose work has long been revising the established mechanisms and traditional existential, philosophical or metaphysical turns that we rely on to understand the world we live in. The symbols and motifs she reflects and materializes in this process come from different cultures and periods, from the framework of Christian iconography and oriental religious contexts. The result is an exceptionally compelling imagery, seductive and subversive, but also deeply self-critical. (Barbora Kundračíková, curator of MUO and producer)
Habima Fuchs, born in Ostrov (former Czechoslovakia), spent many years in Berlin, where she devoted herself to artistic practice, and then made numerous walking trips through Europe to study its culture and mythology from an immediate experience. All of this is reflected in her work, whose means of expression are usually drawing and ceramics, occasionally also other artistic media in the form of a spatial installation. She currently lives in the Czech Republic and, among other things, studies the theory of the five elements and bioinformation technology. Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibition f.e. in Fait Gallery in Brno (Matter in Eternity, 2024), in SVIT gallery in Prague (The Great Ocean Continuously Creating, 2019), in Kunstverein Munich (297, 2018), in Warhus Rittershaus, Cologne (Eyes horizontal, nose vertical / foster the eminent dance, 2016) or ZACHETA in Warsaw (Salt Sea Water Absorbed by Clouds Turns Sweet, 2016) and in Open Art Project in Otwock (AGAVE, Finding the Source, 2015). She participated in groupe exhibitions in PLATO, Ostrava in 2022, Rudolfinum, Prague and Biennale Gherdëina 7 in Ortissei in 2020, Arthena Foundation in Duesseldorf, Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Berlin in 2017 among others. She completed residencies in Germany, Slovakia, Italy, Switzerland or Norway. She works with SVIT gallery in Prague.
Equinox
Habima Fuchs is the type of artist who draws heavily on lived cultural history and philosophy in her work. She draws on her rich experience of both European and Eastern traditions. She combines the principles of both and by synthesising them she arrives at a new conception of the world, which she also envelops in a similarly complex mythology. The metaphorical way of thinking is reflected in the meaning as well as in its formal or visual side – her way of communication is distinctly aesthetic, each element fulfils its role in the story, yet it can hardly be reduced to a simple interplay of elements. The image of the world she creates is therefore truly finit, complete, almost autonomous, while at the same time not lacking the fragility that every creative gesture possesses. Habima´s work is always personally experienced, it is not an “empty game of art”, but at the same time it offers enough space for our own imagination. What she aims at, therefore, is not simple timelessness, she does not offer us an escape from the present situation, on the contrary – if we give it a chance, we will find that her work reveals and re-shapes the so-called present in a very sophisticated way.
The project, prepared by Habima Fuchs for Olomouc and created within the framework of the Year of Home and Abroad, is entitled Equinox. It is a combination of a performance, which took place in the Ecological Centre Sluňákov, and a poetic film, set, among other things, in the spaces of the local Arch – the Garden of Paradise by František Skála and the Solar Mountain by Miloš Šejn. The story of the return to the equilibrium “world of the centre”, the world before the flood, Dantes Paradise, is depicted in eleven images, the central role of which is played by the burying of the snake, the planting of the apple tree and the cutting of the hair. The individual images are conceived as self-contained wholes, encompassing a range of familiar objects and gestures, elevated to the level of transcendence within the ritual. The burning candle, the apple, the grazing cattle, and the “marginal” – but in fact monumental – dramatic entries of family members whose kinship is subtly indicated by common features, contribute to a strongly metaphorical vision of the world. Watching the film, we go through a process of personal purification with the author, while being reminded of our own absolute belonging to the community.