The 2010 Christine Risley Award Winner

Lenka Horakova

‘Ideology’ and ‘After the Fall’

Lenka Horakova graduated from Goldsmiths in 2010.

The work explores the artist’s predominant interest in the symbolic and gestural languages. 

The ‘Ideology’ piece investigates a multi-layered nature of several symbols widely used as the signs indicating political power or signifying nation and aspects of its culture. The core of the work lies in the artist’s experience of communism and capitalism; the East and West divide of Europe by an abstract and concrete wall. The work is set in the period of the fall of the Berlin Wall and looks into the implication it had for Europe and the artist’s family. The carpet becomes a medium to convey an ideology and its constant transformation is communicated within the installation/performance titled ‘After The Fall’.  Its meaning shifts from being a static emblem attached to the wall into a formof coat of arms and a wearable garment. On a more subjective level the piece also explores themes of home, bonds, detachment, loss and freedom.

Lenka Horakova, 2010

Click the link to view 'After the Fall' on youtube.