tranzit.sk/

Collaboration: Adam Balogh, Johanna Bukovsky, Viktoria Gajdošová, Barbora Halmešová, Jos Leys, Michaela Pavelková, Michaela Prablesková, Iida Saarela, Karla Šavrtková

Curated by Judit Angel

Opening: 30. September, 2025 at 6 p.m.
Accompanied by a guided tour with the exhibiting artists.

Venue: tranzit.sk, Beskydská 12, Bratislava
Open: Tuesday – Friday: 2:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.


The exhibition presents a new chapter of Ana de Almeida’s ongoing Collective Archive project (since 2014), which explores the poetics and politics of the archive, and the dynamics of personal and collective remembrance.

At its core are photographs taken by the artist’s father, a Portuguese student in former Czechoslovakia between 1978 and 1987. Shot without artistic ambition, the images carry the imprint of a political commitment shaped by Portugal’s Carnation Revolution (1974), which ended decades of dictatorship and colonial war. That revolutionary spirit extended into his experience of everyday life in socialist Czechoslovakia during the years leading up to the Velvet Revolution (1989).

By activating this material in sculptural and video installations, de Almeida invites reflection on how revolutionary euphoria is displaced, how memory and nostalgia are transmitted across generations, and how historical moments of social upheaval resonate in today’s climate of disillusionment, depoliticization, and the resurgence of ultraconservative and far-right forces.

While institutional archives often rely on photography as indexical proof of the past, de Almeida resists this logic. Instead of fixing historical moments, her sculptural displays open spaces for contemplation, suspension, and the fugitive release of the political potential of the images they contain. Similarly, her video works, employing lip-reading and sign language, situate the semiotics of revolution in an ongoing process of translation. In this way, her understanding of the archive is relational and performative.

Alongside a new sculptural work created specifically for tranzit.sk’s study room, the exhibition also presents the results of a workshop with young Bratislava-based artists who engaged with their own photographic archives. Their collective project searches for moments of resistance and explores the connections between domestic, institutional, private, and collective realms.