Opening: 24. 2. 2026, 6 p.m.
Curators: Zuzana Janečková, Dorota Kenderová
Exhibition period: February 25, 2026 – May 17, 2026
Space C, Hlavná 27, Košice
Thanks to my father who gave me this Gucci face is a series of five video essays on the topics of identity, origins and adolescence in which the artist draws upon her experiences of growing up in East Slovakia with deaf parents. She explores her personal associations of silence through a conceptual series of muted “music” videos in which a combination of sign language, dance and the spoken word probes the topics of social hierarchies, exclusion and the search for a sense of belonging. The “Gucci face” functions as slogan and metaphor, reflecting the relationships between visibility, identity and social status. It touches upon the idea of social value as a commodity which can be bought and paid for – a logic which is deeply embedded in the post-socialist environment in which consumer items such as luxury cars or clothing serve as a means of asserting social status and class.
The artist conveys a sense of intimacy through her images of the family home which her father had built with his own hands, but she adds an ironic distance by presenting her story within the context of a luxurious functionalist villa which symbolizes bourgeois identity and political power, thereby generating a tension between language, means of representation and social norms.
Viktória Citráková is active in both literature and visual art, and her work in both fields is focused on the idea of text as an artistic medium. She draws on intimate autobiographical detail: narratives about the body, failure, desire and shame which she embeds into a broader sociopolitical context. Seemingly marginal and insignificant experiences become the source for a personal mythology, and the artist uses these perceptions to reflect on the theme of fragility, both personal and collective. She studied under Julie Béna and Jakub Jansa at the Performance Studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno and also studied Theory of Interactive Media at Masaryk University. She has exhibited and curated several projects in cultural institutes in both Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Her literary work has been published in literary journals such as Vertigo, Host and Psí víno, and she has also featured on
the Sunday Moment of Poetry broadcast on Rádio FM and Rádio Devín. Her collection Synestetika (2024), published by FACE, was recently named Debut of the Year at the Ivan Krasko Award.
