Curated by Marco Antonini & Sandrine Canac, “There Has Been No Future, There Will Be No Past: surviving cultural profiling in Central and Eastern European contemporary art” brings together nine artists, all recipients of the Young Visual Artist Award (YVAA), a major artist fellowship in Central and Eastern Europe that culminates with a residency at ISCP, with nine additional artists selected through a nomination process. In line with ISCP’s core mission to focus on challenging and underrepresented contemporary artistic practices, this project will offer a renewed framework for the presentation of contemporary art from the region by neutralizing geographical and cultural limitations while stimulating a critical and informed dialogue.

Because the perception of contemporary Central and Eastern European culture is still tightly associated with the ideologies that dominated the social and political contexts during the recent past, sociopolitical history has too often been used as a key to the interpretation of the work by artists who, despite consistencies in their background, are and remain individuals who cannot be gathered under a single geographical label. The exhibition will focus on artists and works that defy easy classification and overrun cultural boundaries in order to highlight the visual and conceptual uniqueness of the works while bringing the artist’s individuality into full focus.

Furthermore, the artists will be allowed to bring in “non-art” images (inspirational material, unfinished or discarded work, archives etc.) to be included as components in the exhibition design. Allowing the artists to contribute to the exhibition not only with their art but also with imagery relating to their daily lives, will bring the public’s attention to the more intimate and personal aspects expressed by their work.

In order to further transcend the YVAA borders, each ISCP alumni has invited a peer to take part in the exhibition, doubling the number of participating artists. The nomination process, while renegotiating the curators’ authority, expands the geographical context and scope of the project.

The artists: Maziar Affrassiabi, Rada Boukova, Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkacova, Igor Eskinja, Andreas Fogarasi, Wojciech Gilewicz, Gergely Laszlo, Ellie Krakow, Jan Mancuska, Svätopluk Mikyta, Sveltana Mircheva, Kader Muzaqi, Marzena Nowak, Irgin Sena, Katarina Sevic, Eric Stephany, and Katarina Zdjelar.

Anetta Mona Chisa (1975, Romania) and Lucia Tkacova (1977, Slovakia) collaborate since 2000. They both graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava and currently they live and work in Prague. Selected exhibitions include: Cinema X: I Like to Watch, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, Canada (2010); The Reach of Realism, Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, Florida (2009); Art Unlimited, Basel, Switzerland (2009); 6th Taipei Biennial, Taipei, Taiwan (2008); Do Something Different, Barbican Centre, London, UK (2008).

The Trivial Few (80:20) is a series of hand-written lists in which Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tkacova try to apply the 80:20 principle in various aspects of their life and art. In 1937, Joseph M. Juran conceptualized the 80:20 principle and extended it to the rule of "the vital" few and the "trivial many", claiming that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Its universal application makes it one of the most useful concepts and tools of modern-day management.

[Image: The Trivial Few, Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tkacova]