Sincerely Making the Heart Smile

Sincerely Making the Heart Smile
Textile as a Language of Identity, Introspection, and Cultural Memory

Regional Museum in Ústí nad Labem
22. 10. 2025 – 4. 1. 2026

Artists: Ulyana Baravik (LT), Ieva Butrimaitė (LT/USA), Hana Coufalová (CZ), Milda Dučinskaitė (LT), Ondřej Ivanov (CZ), Austė Jurgelionytė-Varnė, Karolina Kunčinaitė, Miglė Lebednykaitė, Rasa Leonavičiūtė, Laura Pavilonytė-Ežerskienė, Julija Vosyliūtė za White Moths (LT), Jan Löbl (CZ), Jakub Mikulášek (CZ), Nargiza Nurdinova (LT/KGZ), Justýna Ladislava Svobodová (CZ), Juozas Šilingas (LT) and Luka Žiauberyté (LT) & Jiří Peška (CZ).

Curator: Lenka Sýkorová
Assistent of Curator: Nicole Langrová
Architect of Exhibition: Jan Löbl
Photo: Karolína Malá

Collaboration between FAD UJEP and VAA.

The exhibition Sincerely Making the Heart Smile presents textile as a medium that transcends both functional and aesthetic frameworks, becoming a vehicle for personal and cultural expression. It focuses on how textile art can be used to explore the fluidity of identity, the relationship to the body, the role of tradition, and the significance of cultural memory. Here, textile is understood not only as a material but as a bearer of stories – a visual language that connects personal experience with collective history. The exhibition features artists from the Czech Republic and Lithuania, specifically from the Faculty of Art and Design at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem (Studio of Fashion and Textile Design) and from the Vilnius Academy of Arts (Textile Art and Design program). The exhibition is the outcome of a three-year international curatorial and pedagogical project. The project is built on the principle of duality – connecting two schools, two generations (educators and students), and two national cultures with a shared post-totalitarian experience. Within this collaboration, two main thematic areas are explored: self-reflection (individual experience, introspective perspectives on identity) and tradition (relation to heritage, cultural patterns, and their reinterpretation). The exhibition employs various forms of visual expression – installation, object, video, and archival materials – bridging contemporary artistic thinking with historical contexts. Curatorial inspiration draws from the symbolism of the story Alice in Wonderland, which demonstrates how reality can be viewed differently – as a space that is fluid, unstable, yet open to self-discovery. The laughter mentioned in the exhibition's title is not a reaction to humor, but a metaphor for inner release, openness, and the ability to reevaluate established meanings.

Laughter is an expression of inner release, but also a way in which the body responds to tension, absurdity, or uncertainty. The exhibition Sincerely Making the Heart Smile presents both an ironic and poetic perspective on identity as a mutable, culturally mediated construct. The visual language of textiles – a soft medium that surrounds us from birth to death – here serves as a tool of reflection as well as reinterpretation. A material traditionally tied to the private or utilitarian sphere becomes, in this exhibition, a bearer of narratives about the body, memory, and both personal and collective experience.

The curatorial-pedagogical project is built on the principle of duality – of two schools, two generations (exhibiting as tutors and students), and two nations with similar historical experience. Its outcome takes the form of two thematic lines: self-reflection and tradition. These perspectives are not opposed, but engaged in an ongoing dialogue that reveals how the past shapes our present and how personal introspection can transform collective experience.

The exhibited works reflect diverse approaches to the theme of identity – ranging from introspective self-reflection and explorations of family memory to critical reinterpretations of cultural codes. In the first hall, we encounter the opening part of the exhibition, which invites visitors into an introspective analysis.

Czech artist Jakub Mikulášek presents the installation Obliqua, in which textile merges with intermedia aesthetics – a mutable object between corset and performative structure becomes a metaphor for identity as a fluid process that is continually rewritten. The work oscillates between the human and the metaphysical, drawing inspiration from drag culture and posthumanist thought. The joint work One model by Czech artist Jiří Peška and Lithuanian artist Luka Žiaberytė addresses international dialogue and cultural exchange through both formal and symbolic references to traditional dress, corporeality, and memory. The exhibited object evokes the traditional folk costume present in both cultures, yet in this collaboration it bears the symbolism of a shell beneath which a multilayered self is concealed.

Nargiza Nurdinova, whose identity oscillates between Kyrgyz and Lithuanian cultural spaces, offers in her installation Heavy a powerful statement on personal burden, transformation, and inner strength – heavy stones symbolize fragments of the past, while woolen cocoons offer temporary shelter. Her work reflects her life journey and personal transformations – assigning one cocoon to each decade of life, she demonstrates how she copes with pain, loss, and changes that shape her identity. By contrast, Czech artist Ondřej Ivanov, in his work Žaludový spodek (Ace of Clubs), returns to childhood and its paradoxes – illness, pain, and vulnerability are here reframed through a playful, unconventional form that balances humor and seriousness. His installation interweaves a personal story with the broader question of how identity is formed through trauma and healing. Lithuanian artist Ulyana Baravik, in her work Flow, combines linocut and embroidery as tools for exploring inner landscapes and personal development. The motif of the river becomes a metaphor for the flow of time and the search for balance, while hybrid beings – “bird-fish” – embody the tension between opposites such as freedom and surrender.

Czech artist Jan Löbl, in his installation Handbag, connects personal and collective memory through family photographs. The handbag appears here as a symbol of the female lineage, which the artist processes both as a faithful replica and as a free reinterpretation, symbolically passing it on to future generations. The installation includes a historical display case borrowed from a museum collection, underscoring the so-called archival turn and linking the intimate sphere of memory with a broader cultural context.

At the center of the exhibition stands the notion of identity – not as a fixed entity, but as a process. How we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us is shaped not only by cultural heritage, gender, family, and nationality, but also by the experience of integration – of being inscribed into society, its roles, and structures. The exhibition thus poses the questions: When does the subject feel in harmony with itself? And is it possible to sustain such a state?

Cultural theorist Stuart Hall points out that identity is not an essence, but always a positioning – a relational place within a given time, space, and power dynamic. Identity is therefore constantly reshaped by cultural patterns, gender expectations, family roles, or national belonging. The exhibition develops this idea through works that oscillate between introspection and dialogue with the surroundings, between intimacy and publicness.

At the same time, the exhibition adopts a speculative approach to reality, with the world of Alice in Wonderland serving as curatorial inspiration – a space where reality bends, meanings lose stability, and the subject is in constant transformation. This unsettled view of reality opens up new ways of reading the notions of tradition, family, or homeland. The exhibition explores the textile medium through objects, installations, video, and work with family and collective archives – as a dialogue with the past, but also as a speculation about the future.

Art here does not serve as an illustration of concepts but as a medium that articulates the relationship to the self. The instability of identity becomes a source of creativity. The exhibited works do not provide answers, but rather ask: Is tradition a framework or a limitation? What is our cultural heritage? And where does textile end as an object and begin as an expression?

Textile is not understood merely as fabric, but also as memory – a bearer of intimate and shared experiences that are constantly being rewritten. Every stitch can be a trace of a decision, an emotional state, a question, or an answer that arrives later. We may read it as a line passed through time within the tradition of embroidery, or as a pattern carrying cultural uniqueness.

Thus, the second hall of the exhibition offers a revision of tradition. Lithuanian-American artist Ieva Butrimaitė, through her textile installation Modern Past, explores the tension between the female and male family lines, personal memory, and cultural identity. An artistically crafted coat-like object synthesizes both personal and historical layers, transforming textile into a medium of lineage continuity as well as lost intimacy. Her work combines embroidery inspired by folkloric motifs from family tradition with sublimation prints from the family archive, placed on the lining – thus interweaving temporal layers, family narratives, and individual destinies. Lithuanian artist Juozas Šilingas, in his woven work Links, merges traditional Lithuanian ornaments with his own artistic language. The four-meter-long band results from both intuitive and conscious approaches to ornament, reflecting the shifting relationship to tradition, whose original meanings are often lost today. In doing so, it creates a living dialogue between collective memory and contemporary visuality.

Meanwhile, Milda Dučinskaitė, representing the Lithuanian side of the project, opens with her textile work Preparation For Love an intimate space where an embroidered soft form becomes a bearer of uncertainty, desire, and introspective expectation. The work employs monochromatic coloring and subtle symbolism rooted in Lithuanian tradition, enabling viewers to share in a quiet, contemplative experience.

A special position within the exhibition belongs to the art collective Baltos kandys (White Moths), who have long developed a dialogue between tradition and contemporaneity. In their project ROLLING, they reinterpret archetypal women’s work as a ritual that is not only about repetition but also about conscious returning – to roots, to place, to memory. The act of rolling and unrolling becomes a symbolic gesture that transcends personal narrative and addresses themes of continuity, care, and the cycles of time. Heritage Imprinted is the personal testimony of Czech artist Hanka Coufalová about her relationship with material – straw, which in Czech culture is often burdened with stereotypes. Instead of a derogatory meaning (“he’s got straw sticking out of his shoes”), straw in her work transforms into a bearer of memory, identity, and origin. The motif of the shoe is linked with personal memories and the tradition of Haná Easter egg decoration. Her work develops a dialogue between the solid and the fragile, between what has shaped us and what we carry with us.

The installation The Beauty We Chose by Czech artist Justýna Ladislava Svobodová, placed in the corridor, critically reflects on society’s obsession with the ideal of beauty. Transparent chiffon contrasts here with latex soaked in pigments and perfume, evoking decay and the hidden pressure beneath the surface of society. The work also includes an original perfume – an emotional simulation of fear and anxiety. Svobodová has long worked with contrasting materials and interdisciplinary collaboration.

The project is symbolically concluded with the recording of the performance CYCLE, created at the Vilnius Academy of Arts before the exhibition cycle itself began. Yet it resonates strongly with its themes. In this performance, tradition materializes in a ribbon with a hundred patterns, where ornament is understood as a tool of creation, communication, meditation, and transformation – directly tied to the body and movement. The video shows how embodied gesture and ritualized repetition bring historical motifs to life and transform them into a living language of identity and presence. Through rhythm, movement, and symbolic layering, ornament transcends its decorative function and becomes a performative medium connecting past with present.

The exhibition Sincerely Making the Heart Smile is above all an invitation to slow down, to return to tradition, to touch and to the intimacy of material – which gives us the opportunity to explore ourselves outside of the usual discourse. Just as joy is changeable, fragmentary, and subjective, so too is identity in this exhibition conceived as fragile, yet at the same time deeply rooted within each of us.

Lenka Sýkorová