Eva Kot’átková was born on September 1, 1982, in Prague. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and continued her studies at the San Francisco Art Institute. Her installation Asylum was included in the 2013 Venice Biennale. Her work has been exhibited at the New Museum Triennial in 2015 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Inspired by surrealism, Eva Kot’átková’s distinctive artistic vocabulary combines sculpture, text, and performance. As a metaphor for modern civilization, her extensive work illustrates dreams, expectations, and addresses the mutual anxieties primarily experienced by children, the elderly, and animals—the so-called “weak” members of society, to highlight the fragility of the individual in the face of established structures. She further explores the relationship between the private and personal spheres on one hand, and the public and authoritarian spheres on the other, as well as their antagonistic relationship, which constantly implies and critiques institutional structures beneath the surface.

The Dream Machine is Asleep [febbraio – luglio 2018] Milano

Her solo exhibition The Dream Machine is Asleep is an unprecedented and immersive project where existing works are paired with new productions, including installations, sculptures, oversized objects, collages, and performative moments. Drawing from the vision of the human body as a machine, a large organism whose functioning requires revisions, regeneration, and rest, and from the idea of sleep as a moment in which new visions and parallel worlds are created through dreams, the exhibition explores our projections and most intimate thoughts, anxieties, and disorientation in contemporary life.

At the heart of The Dream Machine is Asleep is the eponymous installation, a gigantic bed with what the artist defines as an office for dream creation at its base. With this work, Eva Kot’átková continues her research into the systems that govern our lives, juxtaposing them with images drawn from the world of childhood to compensate for the lack or loss of imagination.

To enter the exhibition space, visitors are invited to pass through Stomach of the World (2017), an allegory of the world, described as a chaotic organism that alternates between processes of ravenous assimilation and moments of stillness, empathy, or conflict between its inhabitants, as well as phases of control, digestion, expulsion, and recycling of the “waste” produced—namely, phobias and states of anxiety. The work, consisting of a video presented within a walk-through installation shaped like a stylized stomach, draws on protagonists and imagery from the world of childhood and mythology.