“Oh my God, she got the power/Well, look at her, she got the power” – a debut curator’s project of the visual artist Andrej Dúbravský. The title of the exhibition is derived from the lyrics of the song Mother’s Daughter by the American singer Miley Cyrus. It is a kind of recent anthem (2019) for strong women. Dúbravský as an active user of social networks got intrigued by Instagram presentations from the youngest generation of painters still at university. His project poses the following question: what happens to art taken from the Instagram feed and hung in a real, bricks and mortar gallery? Will it stand up?

The selection of artists is by no means arbitrary. Anna Mária Beňová, Dajana Hroššová, Paula Gogola, and Juraj Černák from “our” exhibition, working at turbulent times of ever-changing pandemic waves, fake news, and for the past two months omnipresent pictures of the war, present their own personal story in their art, not only their physicality and sexuality, but maybe also spirituality and family traumas. 

Mira Haberernová-Trančíková – a Slovak artistic icon mainly of the 60s and 70s, banned by the former regime later on, is much more than an honorary guest. Her works are enjoying a rediscovery by the youngest generation of artists and viewers. Her assemblages offer clear, intense corporality. Haberernová’s works in the exhibition raise questions related to the female artist identity, especially in the Slovak context before feminism became trendy on social networks, and actually long before the emergence of social networks and the internet itself…

Suddenly we can also see (sexy) selfies of our artists on their Instagram profiles. And Dúbravský wonders What brings this content into the discourse of contemporary art? Why would young female artists want to present themselves as (sexy) objects? Is this narcissism? Is this feminism? Is it trendy or is it bold? Or is this a trap for elitist art lovers, provincial minds with their own ideas on how a young, serious female artist should present herself? Is this content distracting our attention from the paintings themselves, or on the contrary does it attract our attention to them?