Arter presents Eva Koťátková’s solo exhibition entitled I Sometimes Imagine I’m a Fish with Legs at its entrance floor gallery between 2 March and 27 August 2023. Curated by Eda Berkmen, the exhibition is posed as an environment that appeals to the entire body, calling for an exploration by touch, movement and imagination through a selection of works which employs a diverse array of mediums.

Eva Koťátková’s works focus on the ways in which normative institutions shape the bodies, minds, movements and identities of individuals. Frequently using imagery from schools, prisons or psychiatric institutions, Koťátková exposes the tools, methods and structures utilised for control and containment to explore possibilities for revolt in the current system. Employing a diverse array of mediums such as drawing, collage, photography, video, performance and sculpture, the artist subverts the established disciplinary configurations to open up safe spaces for creative expression, empathic behaviour and imagination.

In her solo exhibition titled I Sometimes Imagine I’m a Fish with Legs, Koťátková examines individuals’ disposition within social structures and their systemic causes, as well as the institutional frameworks that enable the presentation of artworks. The exhibition is posed as an environment that appeals to the entire body, calling for an exploration by touch, movement and imagination. Drawings, sculptures and narratives, each constituting a work on its own, come together to host, support and inspire visitors situated by the artist as creative partners in a quest to create a communal testing ground within the gallery space for finding different ways of connecting and sharing.

I Sometimes Imagine I’m a Fish with Legs functions like a “collective body” – to adopt Koťátková’s artistic vocabulary – composed of parts, some produced specifically for this occasion and others adapted from the artist’s previous exhibitions. Each part marks a different zone spreading across the gallery to welcome visitors to lounge, dream, play and reflect. These zones also invite the audience to lend an ear to the stories collected by Koťátková from the media, textbooks, and her own family, as well as from the children she collaborated with in different parts of the world.

The exhibition on Arter’s entrance floor is a call to consider the importance of relating and connecting to each other beyond normative labels and identities, to build nets and collective organisms rather than isolated islands and to listen to the stories of those who are not often given enough voice.