Klára Hosnedlová is a young Czech artist known for her astonishing multi-disciplinary installations. Hosnedlová creates dazzling worlds incorporating architecture, fashion, sculpture, performance and embroidery. The present work formed part of the artist’s site-specific presentation at the National Theatre of Prague in 2018, titled ‘Ponytail Parlour’. With the 1980s brutalist architecture of the Nová scéna as the starting point, Hosnedlová transformed the cloakroom into a performative feminine retreat. The artist carefully selected theatre costumes and design which complemented the acutely delicate framed embroideries, picturing the female form through a lens of tactile materiality. Using a traditionally feminine and domestic medium in Untitled (from Ponytail Parlour), Hosnedlová expertly conjures the opposing textures of patterned textile, shimmering hair and skin. The close cropping of the picture plane and the sharp pointed nails contribute to differentiating these artworks from the preconceived notions of gentility, which have historically been associated with womanhood and needlework.
Earlier this year, Hosnedlová exhibited her first institutional solo presentation at Kestner Gesellschaft in Hanover. Open from March to June To Infinity metamorphosed two floors of the museum into an ‘archaic yet futuristic’ utopiai. Monumental hanging sculptures, which were visually poised between stalactites and chrysalises, housed the artist’s embroideries within fissures in their forms. The show was widely celebrated and Frieze’s Gabriela Acha wrote: ‘Hosnedlová’s enveloping installation recasts every element as a character in a play of her devising, one which tells a speculative origin story of human culture and its imminent transformation through new forms of intelligence. Hosnedlová is planning a further institutional exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel in early 2024 and a debut solo show with White Cube, London in 2025.
