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Jana Želibská's Solo Exhibition The World. Despair – Hope Explores Female Consciousness

exhibition · 2026-04-07

The solo exhibition by Jana Želibská, titled The World. Despair – Hope, explores the contemporary landscape through three distinct images, portraying it as both chaotic and inventive. The artist conveys despair and hope as two emotional extremes within a collective experience, crafting a visual vocabulary marked by sensuality, emotional depth, symbolic richness, and ironic juxtapositions. Since the late 1960s, Želibská has played a pivotal role in the Central European neo-avant-garde movement. Her work fits into the larger context of the feminist (neo-)avant-garde. Beginning with her first solo show, Possibility of Discovery, in 1967, she has created experiences that alter perception, fostering a new way of seeing and engaging with art while focusing on the evolution of female consciousness.

Key facts

  • Jana Želibská has a solo exhibition titled The World. Despair – Hope.
  • The exhibition interprets the world in three images as a disturbed yet creative field.
  • Želibská's visual language includes sensuality, affective intensity, symbolic condensation, and ironic short-circuit.
  • She presents the world as irritable and articulates despair and hope as two affective poles.
  • Since the second half of the 1960s, she has been a decisive figure of the Central European neo-avant-garde.
  • Her first solo exhibition was Possibility of Discovery in 1967.
  • Her work transforms conditions of reception and introduces a new regime of seeing.
  • Her work is part of the broader genealogy of the feminist (neo-)avant-garde.
  • She has long devoted herself to cultivating sensibility through shock and modelling female consciousness.

Entities

Artists

  • Jana Želibská

Sources