Gabriela Gažová’s Nudes

 The exhibition project Gabriela Gažová’s Nudes presents a series of female nude paintings, the unbelievable story of which points to the issues of ownership, power, authorship and (female) or anonymous (anonymized) gaze/perspective.

 man claims female nudes I painted are his to sell 

 In June 2020, the lost series of paintings of female nudes was accidentally stumbled upon by the authoress herself – displayed in the shopping window of a commercial private gallery in Bratislava. The owner of the gallery had acquired the paintings suspiciously (and it is yet to be clarify how) and was selling them as artworks by an Unknown Author (generic masculinum)- thus depriving the (female) artist not only of the artworks and their value (which he determined himself) but also her authorship, name and gender identity.

 In the exhibition Gabriela Gažová’s Nudes (man claims female nudes I painted are his to sell), the authoress returns her name to her paintings and examines the themes of artworks’ value, fragility of ownership, relevance of authors’ gender identities – especially in the genre of nude – and critically reflects on its decorative function. In addition to the stolen works, non-stolen male figural nudes by the authoress will be exhibited in the A4 – space for contemporary culture. The artworks will be (conceptually) for sale.

curators: Gabriela Gažová & Barbora Nemčeková
technical and production assistance: Aliza Orlan
cover photo author: Ondrej Urban
technical help and transport: Alexander Gažo

It was supported from public sources by the Slovak Arts Council.