#hereforyou is an exhibition about women trapped by social stereotypes and their own ideas of perfection, which are the result of the ubiquitous pressure on women, their appearance, behaviour and roles. Lucia Dovičáková's ridiculous and tragic heroines usually try to fit into some stereotypically "feminine" situation: they attempt to cook, to serve their husbands and children, to nurture others to the point of their own exhaustion, to be presentable and yet to stand aside unassumingly, to have a perfect home and a job and to be a perfect mother at the same time. In doing so, the author focuses on the moment of tension between the unrealistic expectations that women often assume and the reality that brings imperfection and failure.

She adds to this: “I think that the discrepancy between the tensions we feel, and the expectations placed on us is more pronounced for women. These contradictions make me feel that I have not been told the truth. I can unmask it in the painting.”

Lucia Dovičáková's depiction of these internal and external conflicts takes the form of surreal, grotesque or, on the contrary, horror scenes in which woman's hands try to hold together a shattered vase (or is it a head?), a wife disappears into a stack of folded laundry, a housewife becomes a pot, a mother stands on legs made of blocks from a children's building set that threaten to fall at any moment, or clutches a child growing between her intestines and ribs. Dovičáková’s paintings can resemble a nightmare. However, they do not depict dreams, but an intense reflection of the experience of everyday situations faced by women. At the same time, her paintings contain a subversive humour that is often self-ironic, liberating and overtly feminist. This humour is like the red pill in The Matrix: once you swallow it, there is no going back to slumbering in the patriarchal ideals of the perfect housewife.

About the artist: Lucia Dovičáková (born 1981) is one of the remarkable representatives of contemporary figurative Slovak painting. In her ironic and self-ironic work, she often deals with themes from everyday life, especially the lives of women. She was a finalist for the Oskar Čepan Award. She lives and works in Košice. https://instagram.com/lucia_dovicakova?igshid=NGVhN2U2NjQ0Yg==

Curators: Zuzana Štefková, Lenka Kukurová

The project is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the City of Prague and the Municipal District of Prague 7. Media partners of the project are Artmap, Radio 1, GoOut.

The co-organiser of the opening is the Foundation and Centre for Contemporary Art.

Photos of the exhibtion at Artwall: Martin Micka