WHILE THE MEADOWS (S)SMELL

WHILE THE MEADOWS (S)SMELL

anto_nie & Alex Sihelsk*

Opening: 12 March 2026 at 6 p.m.

Exhibition duration: 13 March - 30 April 2026

As Long as the Meadows Smell is a love song to the landscape, to the stagnant herd of goats, to growth, decay and shepherding that walks between worlds.

anto_nie and Alex Sihelsk* build a utopian vision of the near future in which people living in small communities are dedicated to regenerating the landscape. They tell stories set in the pasture, on trains that only run between towns when there is enough electricity, in shared kitchens and vegetable gardens. Stories that blur the line between the human and the inhuman, between reality and fiction. This world was visited for the first time by the author's film Zveromedze, which will be screened for the first time in Prague as part of the exhibition.

In an empty room there is a scarecrow / idol / monument / statue full of stories. It refers to the tradition of weaving grass into ornaments across European paganism, which may have mythically ensured crops but also very practically scared away birds and beasts. It depicts a symbol of the gender-neutral deity Nyas. The symbol of the Slavic deity of death stands out from the possible future reality/environment of Zveromedze in its multiplicity and also the possible improbability of its existence. We don't know if it is a real deity - Slavic mythology has either not survived or is, on the contrary, fictional or heavily coloured - but even this ambivalence of its possible (non-)existence seems to capture its meaning as a deity who stands at the boundary of life and death, decay and growth. It is also said to have fulfilled the function of a psychopomp - a guide of souls, a shepherd of the afterlife who released his human flock from his care by cutting the thread of life.

The duo aims to explore the liminal spaces between apparent opposites. Places between two different ecosystems are considered in ecology to have the highest species richness. Two different systems rub against each other, collide and seep into each other. And it is these liminal - transitional - places and creatures that play a central role in the new world. The liminal place is constantly on the edge of existence and non-existence. Like the border that we graze with a herd of goats to prevent it from turning into a permanent forest.

The exhibition series entitled EXPERIENCE OF THE SYSTEM for 2026 in the Olga Space Gallery continues the themes of the previous years (2025- DR.ART, 2024 - THE HERITAGE OF COLLECTIVES: ADAPTATION AND TRANSFORMATION, 2023 - PARENT, 2022 - DAUGHTERS SONS MOTHERS FATHERS) by thematizing the transformative potential of art in a broader social concept.