Anna Zemánková presented in the exhibition BIO28: Double Agent in Ljubljana
Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO)
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Design Biennial (BIO28), the gallery has loaned three works by Anna Zemánková for the exhibition Double Agent, which will take place at the Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO) in Ljubljana, Slovenia, from November 21, 2024, to April 6, 2025.
Organized by the MAO and the Centre for Creativity (CzK), the curatorial concept of this project was developed by Professor and Curator Alexandra Midal in collaboration with Emma Pflieger, Assistant Curator.
Political, bold, vibrant, and provocative, Double Agent: Do You Speak Flower? examines the figure of floriography, a code hidden within flowers to transmit secret information. The core of this transdisciplinary and multifaceted exhibition scrutinizes the pivotal role of floriography used by women to portray their identities. In that sense, flowers pave the way for antagonistic and alternative interpretations of both the meanings and the context in which they are decrypted.
The exhibition draws on critical theory to define self-identification as an aesthetic and political act that resonates with vanquished, marginalized, forgotten, or invisible minorities. Given that flowers represent both the commodification of women into an idealized beauty paradigm and serve as a feminist, anti-colonial, gender, and queer cryptology, the title Double Agent: Do You Speak Flower? reflects this dual perspective. The Biennial displays an ongoing investigation that questions the role of the exhibition in providing answers, and instead wishes to open a series of conversations with designers, artists and the public.
It was at the beginning of the 1960s that this humble Moravian woman began creating works, strikingly responding to impulses from the depths. At dawn, she would mentally gather flowers “that grow nowhere else,” making them emerge from the paper.
Anna Zemánková is an established figure of outsider art, to the point that she was honored in 2013 at the Venice Biennale before a significant collection of her works joined the collections of the Centre Pompidou, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Mumok.
In 2023, the gallery presented her in a solo show at Art Basel Paris, and the following year Adriano Pedrosa, curator of the Venice Biennale, exhibited a group of her works. In 2026, the Hermès Corporate Foundation in Brussels subsequently presented eight of her drawings.