Jana Zelibska- Swan Song Now- Pavilion of the Czech and Slovak Republics : 57th International Art Exhibition- La Biennale di Venezia 2017 / Curator & Editor: Lucia Gregorova Stach

Swan Song Now The objects, installations and videos of Jana Želibská often employ antithesis and paradox. Their notably gender-based symbolism gradually crystallized in the central meta-theme of time, particularly subjective human time measuring out life and arranging all desires, dreams and experiences into the vestiges of memory. They are contemplations of unstoppable time, of the impermanence of all things. Yet typically there is no lack of remove, even of ironic distance, absurdity and wit. There is also a trace of chronophobia in her works as a typical meta-subject of the art of 1960s, with an updated reference to a new kind of anxiety about time in our era (Time Flies... Save Time, 2016). For the pavilion, Želibská has created an installation dominated by a monumental projection of the sea, filmed in Venice. An array of luminous swans rests on islets, representing the implacable human yearning for constancy in a world driven by unremitting change, bringing in its wake unavoidable losses as we traverse the breach between past and present.

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