Participatory art mediation 6: Between public image and everyday life

How do we imagine the First Republic today, and where do those ideas come from? From film and literature, visual materials, family stories or school history lessons? The years 1918-1938 are often linked with democracy, modernisation and cultural development. In the exhibition 1918-1938: First Republic, participants will consider how this image meets perspectives offered by specific artworks and by the histories of their creation and collecting.

At several stops, they will follow how young Czechoslovakia related to other countries through culture and how its inhabitants were depicted at work, in leisure time and in different social settings. The session will also focus on women as authors and participants in the art scene of the period. Through shared observation and dialogue, participants will ask what these works make visible today, how historical distance shapes their reading, and how awareness of the events that ended the First Republic enters that reading.

The meeting ends with a collective art mediation, where participants can offer their own interpretation of a selected work. The programme is based on sharing, dialogue and voluntary participation - everyone can choose their own level of involvement.

The session will be led by Alena Kotyza, an educator at the National Gallery Prague, and Nikola Ludlová, inclusion and sustainability coordinator at the Jindřich Chalupecký Society.