Jakub Jansa, teacher at the Performance Studio of the Faculty of Fine Arts BUT, is exhibiting at the Venice Biennale

On Thursday, 7 May 2026, the Czechoslovak Pavilion was officially opened at the Venice Art Biennale with the exhibition project The Silence of the Mole by an international team of artists consisting of Jakub Jansa, head of the Performance Studio at FFA BUT; the Slovak artist duo Alex Selmeci and Tomáš Kocka Jusko; and curator Petr Sit. The installation, which combines film, sculptures, and architecture, will be on view at the Giardini in Venice through November 22, 2026.

The Venice Biennale is one of the most important international exhibitions of contemporary visual art. This cultural event, which takes place every two years, provides a platform for artists from around the world to showcase their work, both in national pavilions and in other exhibition spaces throughout the city.

At the heart of the exhibition project The Silence of the Mole is Mr. M., a performer who has spent his entire life portraying the fictional character of the mole—a figure originally intended for a children’s audience. The installation, which combines film, sculptural objects, and architecture, traces the process in which the main character loses control of himself; after years of nonverbal empathy, his body and voice cease to belong to him alone. The project also works with silence as a motif of the moment when imagination becomes an exhausted public mask, and asks whether empathy alone can be the sole instrument for transforming others. The exhibition was conceived as a unified environment resulting from a long-term dialogue among all members of the creative team—Jakub Jansa’s film is created in direct relation to the spatial sculptural installation by the duo Selmeci Kocka Jusko.
The project was selected by a jury composed of independent experts and representatives of the National Gallery in Prague and the Slovak National Gallery for a joint presentation by both countries on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Czechoslovak Pavilion in Venice. The pavilion opened in Venice’s Giardini park in 1926, adjacent to the pavilions of France, Germany, and Great Britain. The construction of the national pavilion in Venice was a significant representative achievement of the First Czechoslovak Republic. The building was designed by architect Otakar Novotný, one of the key figures of modern architecture. Despite the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, the pavilion remains jointly owned by the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. After twenty years, the two countries have agreed this year to present a joint exhibition at the Venice Biennale. The curator of the exhibition is Michal Novotný, director of the Post-1945 Art Collection at the National Gallery in Prague.
The Silence of the Mole
Czech and Slovak Pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale, Venice
Commissioner: Michal Novotný (NGP)
Artists: Jakub Jansa, Selmeci Kocka Jusko
Curator: Peter Sit
9 May 2026 – 22 November 2026
Jakub Jansa (1989) is a Czech artist who works with film, installation, and performance art. His work combines fiction, humour, and absurdity with a critical reflection on social structures, power relations, and ideologies. In his long-term cycle Club of Opportunities, he focuses on issues of class and power in a poetic yet analytical style. In 2021 he received the Jindřich Chalupecký Award. Among other venues, his works have been presented at the National Gallery Prague, GHMP, Neue Galerie Graz, Pioneer Works, and Anthology Film Archives in New York, as well as at the biennales in Athens and Ljubljana. Together with Julie Béna, he heads the Performance Studio at the FFA BUT.

Selmeci Kocka Jusko is the artistic duo of Alex Selmeci and Tomáš Kocka Jusko. In their work they concentrate on the relationship between space, perception, and imagination, creating intermedia installations and ensembles of objects. They examine the themes of labour, exhaustion, and deceleration as forms of resistance against the increasingly frantic pace of the modern world. They have exhibited their work in Prague, Košice, Ostrava, Hamburg, Budapest, Ljubljana, and Tokyo, among other locations, and have also realised permanent installations within the public space.

Peter Sit (1991) is an artist and curator who is currently employed as the artistic director at the magazine e-flux journal. In 2012–2022 he was a co-founder of the APART platform, with which he realised a series of exhibition and publication projects in Europe, the USA, and the Middle East. In his curatorial and editorial work, he focuses on contemporary art, language, education, and mental health. At present he is working on the research project Art in Times of Anxieties and Depressions.

Source: National Gallery Prague
Photo credit: Jan Kolský

Author Mgr. Tímea Vitázková
Published
Short URL https://www.favu.vut.cz/en//f91716/d329332

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