Curatorial foreword

Once upon a time, there was a completely normal person. More than anything in the world, they loved to sleep at least seven hours a night and consume approximately 2,000 kilocalories per day. They spent a quarter of their life in various educational institutions, where, alongside hundreds, if not thousands, of other normal people, they learned all sorts of things. Not necessarily things that interested them or that they were exceptionally good at, but rather those dictated by the curriculum. As an adult, after finishing school, they spent a third of their time – which means about half of their waking hours – working for someone else. To ensure they performed well at their job, they regularly visited doctors who measured, examined, and, when necessary, fine-tuned them. Thanks to this, the work capacity of this normal person remained at a fairly high level for several decades. At some point, they met another normal person of the opposite sex, and they had up to three normal children together. And so, they learned and worked until the end of their days, never once stopping to think that things could be or should be different. Do you know this person?

Under Pressure grows out of the idea that just as a growing plant does not know whether it is a flower or a weed, a human being at birth cannot foresee what forces and conditions will begin to shape them. Figuratively speaking, this exhibition takes place in the field of tension between the natural and the ordinary. In the broadest sense, natural is everything that comes into being in the world. Ordinary or normal is that which is average, or what occurs most frequently. To say that the ordinary harms the natural means that it takes a piece out of it. Something is left out, and the world loses part of its nature.

The idea of the “normal” human being is, in the context of human history, a relatively new phenomenon, whose origins reach back only three centuries – to the Enlightenment. It was then that the notion of the separation of body and mind took root, along with the image of a mind endowed with learning capacity governing a bodily machine that could be trained, fed, and treated. This way of thinking regards the human primarily as a machine of economic potential. Those unable to realise that potential are cast aside as worthless.

In recent centuries, humankind has thoroughly studied, measured, and mapped itself and our world. The triumph of reason has brought immense advances in science and medicine, the benefits of which are available to more people than ever before. Yet these developments also have a darker side. Those who do not conform to the norm have had to endure various forms of violence: stigmatisation, discrimination, human experimentation, the loss of freedom, and even the loss of life.

The oldest work in the exhibition dates back to the 19th century, yet its themes and motifs reach to the very beginnings of human civilisation. The natural reveals itself in every moment, though it is most clearly discernible across long spans of time. To see beyond the blinders of our own era, it may help to anchor ourselves deep in time, for human history is brimming with examples of different forms of social organisation. Even in this region, the division of roles between men and women has been different from what so-called traditional gender roles prescribe. 

Questioning and expanding the notion of normality to accommodate different ways of living and being can be understood as the gradual loosening of a centuries-long clenched fist. The paintings, sculptures, photographs, and videos displayed in the clockwise-flowing exhibition within the pink circle of the Art Hall’s pavilion address themes of power, mental health, neurodivergence, gender roles, coping, love, and family. They by no means represent everything that is natural, but each one gives voice to or sheds light on some experience or issue that has until now been pushed to the margins. Deceptive ordinariness constantly seeks to convince us of its naturalness, and there are many people in the world for whom adapting to the norm requires so little effort that their daily submission to it may remain unnoticed for a long time. If you are here now, with the time and willingness to listen to others as well as to yourself, take the opportunity to work through one question in depth: can you be yourself every day?