A customer service center in city hall, a movie theater, or a bank: places we take for granted as part of urban life and which are easily accessible to able-bodied citizens. For people with limited mobility, however, they often present an obstacle—sometimes an insurmountable one.

In her work, Zorka Lednárová has long focused on the theme of barriers in the city—both the visible ones and those that most people are not even aware of. She herself uses a wheelchair and thus knows this issue from daily experience. Although current architectural and urban planning principles claim to accommodate the needs of all residents, the reality of accessability is often much more complex.

In the exhibition Where Freedom Ends at the Artwall gallery, the artist draws attention to places where a person in a wheelchair is excluded by just one or two steps. Accompanied by local students, she places wooden models of enlarged stairs in public spaces thus creating symbolic barriers that highlight the problem that is commonly overlooked. Documentation of these site-specific actions confronts society with the existence of barriers that, while inconspicuous, are impassable for many people. The aim of the project is not merely to point out that our cities still do not meet the needs of all their residents. Lednárová invites us to envision a public space in which inclusion would not be an exception, but the norm.

The exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Artivist Lab gallery, where a parallel exhibition of the same name is currently on view, featuring additional works by the artist and documentation of the project.

About the artist: Zorka Lednárová is a Slovak artist living in Germany. She studied sculpture in Bratislava, Kiel, and Hangzhou, China. She subsequently completed postgraduate studies at the Universität der Künste in Berlin in curatorial studies, art in public spaces, and cultural policy. From 2007, she ran the exhibition space Okk/Raum 29 (Organ kritischer Kunst) in Berlin for eight years. Her work has been presented in various European countries as well as outside Europe, and she has long focused on themes of borders, freedom of movement, bodily experience, and social barriers.

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.