Jirka Skála - Thank You for Ruling Us
The blurred silhouettes of human figures in Jirka Skála's photographs are reminiscent of phantoms emerging from the fog of the unconscious: obscure, familiar and yet ominous. The title of the series, "Thank You for Ruling Us", underscores our uncertainty. Who is the speaker and who is the addressee? Are the anonymous figures thanking us for ruling them? Or is the artist speaking on our behalf to them?
Although it is not obvious at first glance, in this photographic series Jirka Skála reflects on a theme that he returns to repeatedly: the value of work and its social contexts. His subjects are manual workers – specifically non-academic employees of the Academy of Fine Arts, whose work keeps the art institution running but who often remain invisible in the context of the Academy. Skála's photographs can be seen as a kind of homage to these overlooked workers. Yet his intention is more general. He thematises the disparity between the symbolic invisibility of manual workers and the key role they play in society. Without their work, our society would collapse, and yet they are the not adequately represented by it. Their bodies are marked by manual labour that is neither heroic nor specific. It is this anonymous, universal type of workforce that offers the audience the possibility of identification.
At the same time, these photographs present overworked bodies as a materialization of the subconscious fear of the ruling classes. They evoke a situation of social paranoia reflecting the relations of late capitalism: the fear of the privileged class that the damaged and exhausted bodies of manual workers will get out of control. Along with this, the photographs bring to light the process of their dehumanization – the transformation of people into monsters. Think of Marx's Capital and his "spectre of communism haunting Europe" or the popularity of the zombie figure in neo-Marxist analyses of the zombie proletariat and zombie capitalism. In "Zombies of Immaterial Labour: The Modern Monster and the Death of Death", curator Lars Bang Larsen writes that there are several reasons why we need the modern monster. One is that it "can help us meditate on alienation in our era of an immaterial capitalism that has turned life into cash."
Skála's "Thank You for Ruling Us" project offers the possibility of such a meditation. On the one hand, we can see it as a distanced representation of the alienated and resigned bodies of the ruling class, but on the other hand we can interpret it as a questioning of the status quo of power relations. The title "Thank You for Ruling Us" can be read ironically. It is then up to the viewers how they will relate to the pronouns in the title, if they will identify with the position of the ruled, and whether and how they will react to this identification. Returning from the symbolic framework to the story of Skála’s protagonists: at the time the photos were made, at least some of them got involved in trade unions.
Curator: Zuzana Štefková
About the artist: Jirka Skála (*1976) is a Czech artist and author based in Prague. In his work stemming from post-conceptualism Skála uses various media including text, staged reading, photography, and video. He is interested in the themes of paid and unpaid work and the disappearance of the boundaries between work and leisure. Skála is a laureate of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award. His work has been exhibited at numerous exhibitions in the Czech Republic and abroad. Among others in the National Gallery in Prague, Paris, New York, Moscow, etc.
The project is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the City of Prague and the Municipal District of Prague 7 and State Fund of Culture Czech Republic. Media partners of the project are Artmap, Radio 1, GoOut.
Photos of the exhibition at Artwall: Martin Micka