Institution
About us
Biennale Ve věci umění / Matter of Art (VVUMOA) was founded in 2018 by tranzit.cz for the purpose of organizing an international exhibition of contemporary art held in Prague in 2020. VVUMOA is built upon the nearly two-decades-long effort of tranzit.cz and it aims to serve as an inclusive platform which engages a wide range of audiences and connects different social groups. VVUMOA is a critical, self-critical and experimental institution. Our aim is to emancipate repressed relationships between the past and the present and examine and dwell in social spaces where legible communication usually breaks down.
Our networks
VVUMOA is firmly rooted in the international network of tranzit.org and we have also established partnerships with institutions in various platforms, such as the Feminist Institution, the East European Biennale Alliance (OFF-Biennale in Budapest, Visual Culture Research Center in Kiev and Biennale Warszawa) or the OsloBiennalen.
About tranzit.cz
tranzit.cz is a part of tranzit.org network working independently in Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovak Republic and Romania, founded in 2002. During its existence, tranzit.cz has been engaged in numerous international projects and exhibitions in the framework of tranzit.org, such as Monument to Transformation 1989 – 2009; Manifesta 8; Report on the Construction of a Spaceship Module, and others. ERSTE Foundation is the main partner of tranzit.cz.
VVUMOA is organized in cooperation with Prague City Gallery
People
Production manager Max Dvořák
PR & Press Vít Havránek
Curator Veronika Janatková
Executive director Věra Janíčková
Publications & production Tereza Stejskalová
Curator
Viktória Beličáková
Production manager, art historian and curator Viktória Beličáková studied Art History at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague (2013–2019). She has completed internships at the City Gallery Prague, Regional Gallery in Liberec, Ludwig Museum and the Trafó House of Contemporary Arts in Budapest. Viktória worked as a curator and coordinator at the contemporary art gallery U10 in Belgrade, Serbia. For the past two years she has been collaborating with Artlist.cz, a database of contemporary Czech art.
Max Dvořák
Graduated from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (Center for Audiovisual Studies, 2010-2013) and from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (Studio of Supermedia, 2013-2016) and completed internships at Akademia Sztuk Pięknych in Krakow (2014) and at ACUD Macht Neu in Berlin (2017). As a freelancer he has worked for numerous cultural organizations incl. the platform for contemporary art PAF Olomouc, Containall, Fuchs2, Ankali, Alfred ve dvoře and Czech Radio.
Vít Havránek
Organizer and theoretician based in Prague. Between 1996-1998 he worked at the National Gallery Prague and between 1998-2002 at the Prague City Gallery. From 2002 to 2019 he has been working as director of the initiative for contemporary art tranzit.cz. Since 2007 co-founder of tranzitdisplay, resource center for contemporary art, lecturing Contemporary art at the AAAD, Prague. He was a member of tranzit.org, one of the three curatorial teams of Manifesta 8, Murcia (2010).
Veronika Janatková
Film producer, director and programmer. In the last decade she has been active mainly in the field of documentary film, focusing on social-political driven narratives. Among others she has worked on topics dealing with global supply chain in the textile industry, the dynamics of global south and north, current feminist movements in Rwanda or the political realities of post-soviet Caucasus region. Her directing debut is a documentary film Ticket to the Moon dealing with utopias in the context of space explorations in the time of cosmic spring. Veronika co-founded and has been programming the DokuBaku IDFF, the first independent documentary film festival in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Věra Janíčková
She studied in the Department of Media Studies and Journalism (Faculty of Social Studies) of the Charles University in Prague, and in the Arts Faculty of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen in the field of European cultural studies. She is engaged in the mapping of responses to the transition and transformations of the 1990s in art and society. She was one of the initiators of the project Monument to Transformation, reflecting transformational tendencies in an international social and artistic context, since 2009 she has been a senior co-editor of tranzit.cz publishing program. In 2010 she was involved in the preparations for the exhibition Manifesta 8 in Murcia and Cartagena, Spain as the coordinator of the tranzit.org curatorial team. In the context of the Monument to Transformation project she has worked on the preparation of exhibitions, seminars and symposia – for example, Auditorium, Stage, Backstage – An Exposure in 32 Acts (Frankfurt, 2006/2007), Société anonyme (Paris, 2007), Synonyma (Stockholm, 2007), Prague Biennale 3 (Prague, 2007), Labour Day (Bucharest, 2008) and many more. In 2011 she was commissioner of the Pavilion of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic at the 54th edition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Tereza Stejskalová
Critic and curator based in Prague, Czech Republic. Between 2012-2015 she worked as an art editor of the biweekly cultural magazine A2 and the online daily news site A2larm. Since 2015 she has been working as a curator at tranzit.cz. She has contributed numerous texts to books, catalogues, art magazines and web sites (e.g. politicalcritique.org, kaleidoscope.media/). In 2014 she received the Věra Jirousová Award for established art critics. She has curated exhibitions at Tranzitdisplay, Prague; Studio of Young Artists, Budapest or Kunsthalle Bratislava. Together with Barbora Kleinhamplová she published a book of interviews Who is an Artist? (2015).