EDUcare: Tereza Štětinová

Tereza Štětinová is an artist with a sculptural sensibility. Her specific approach to the material is already appreciated in galleries and auction houses. During PAW 24 from 5 to 8 September, her work will be on display at the exhibition Housing Culture, at Czech Republic Sotheby’s International Realty on Janáčkovo nábřeží.

Tereza returned from a ten-day “sculpture marathon” in a meadow in the highlands, which her family has owned for a long time. She goes there to work on large sculptural realizations in stone, which are not possible in Prague. She is currently working on completing two plaques in Carrara marble, two memorials, to Palach and Toufar at the Borůvkovo Sanatorium where they died. Using this particular situation, she describes how she works with materials and how she combines her work with her family life.

“I have this feeling that even though the work is incredibly physically demanding, I always get into this kind of zen afterwards. Then I’m fully focused and it’s just me and the material.”
Tereza studied photography at FAMU, but soon moved on to physical, more handmade work with sculpture (which she also studied in high school). She enjoys multi-genre approaches, touching up and inventing different ways to express herself. Photographers, in her experience, are then often not allowed to express themselves in other ways though. The struggle and the need to defend oneself is, in her opinion, quite the most intense in photography, among other artistic media.
Spiritual motifs appear not only in the monuments to Palach and Toufar, but in Tereza Štětinová’s work in general. Among them, there is also a strong line of feminine attitudes and the theme of motherhood. This is the theme she emphasized in her last exhibition, which she prepared with curator Klára Vavříková: Look at yourself, like looking through the window into the garden at Zahorian Van Espen in Bratislava. Her theme is self-acceptance, especially in adolescence. The inspiration for the exhibition took Tereza and Klara to the entries from their own early adolescence in their old diaries. These were now seen from their mother’s point of view and developed in the exhibition by picking up on generational traumas.

Tereza Štětinová is also a teacher, she teaches at the elementary art school in Prosek.”I try to convey to them that they can use their creativity in any field, even if they don’t go to art college, they can still think creatively. Art is something that will continue to brighten their lives, and art will make them more tolerant.”

photo: Jan Zima, (archive of Tereza Příhodová)