VENICE BIENNALE CZECHOSLOVAK PAVILION

THE SILENCE OF THE MOLE

Presented by the National Gallery Prague in collaboration with the Slovak National Gallery, the exhibition brings together Czech artist Jakub Jansa and the Slovak artistic duo Selmeci Kocka Jusko (Alex Selmeci and Tomáš Kocka Jusko), working with curator Peter Sit and commissioner Michal Novotný on the project The Silence of the Mole.

Artistic Concept

The Silence of the Mole is a project that examines what happens to the imagination at the moment when it becomes a depleted public mask, a national symbol, and a tool of cultural representation. The Czechoslovak pavilion celebrates its hundredth anniversary in 2026. Although the country whose name the building bears no longer exists, it remains a reminder of a moment when geopolitical collaboration was imagined as a shared future. In the context of a world shaped by political, economic, and ecological crises, the project reflects on the role of cultural representation and on the fragile boundary between imagination and ideology. 

The central protagonist of the project is Mr. M., a performer who has played, or better yet embodied, the character of the mole throughout their entire life. Once a figure of play and creative freedom, the character has gradually become emptied of meaning, unremarkable, universally acceptable. Mr. M. resembles the creature from Franz Kafka’s story The Burrow, dwelling underground in a labyrinth of passageways and chambers that function as both shelter and prison. The character also recalls Krtek, the beloved mole from Czechoslovak animated films, whose silent gestures of care and empathy once offered children an image of a just world. In the figure of Mr. M., however, this language of empathy becomes exhausted and emptied out. As the character loses their voice, the mole becomes a metaphor for a subject dispossessed of agency.

The exhibition functions as an environment composed of architecture, objects, and film. Jakub Jansa developed the film in direct conversation with the sculptural objects and architectural installation of the artist duo Selmeci Kocka Jusko, which transforms the space of the pavilion into a mole’s burrow. Entering the pavilion, visitors find themselves inside Mr. M.’s burrow: Darkened passageways evoke underground tunnels and lead toward a central chamber functioning as the mole’s repository and resting space. This is a place of withdrawal but also concentration, populated by mute objects resembling musical instruments. The instruments were once capable of making music but have now fallen silent—like Mr. M., only multiplied into many. Among them is The Ear of the Householder, a sculptural model of the inner ear that recalls the strange sound haunting Kafka’s burrow. Together, the architecture, objects, and film create a unified dramaturgical environment in which the pavilion itself becomes the medium of the work.

A rich political genealogy shows that, in the “deep soil” of history, a quiet energy can accumulate, forming an alternative polis where a more just world, once only imagined, can begin to take shape. The Silence of the Mole is an attempt to imagine such a possibility: to explore scenarios that move beyond resistance toward an active practice of imagining and enacting the otherwise. Let’s test whether art—through sound, space, and encounter—can become that site of rehearsal…

– Peter Sit

The artists Jakub Jansa, Alex Selmeci, and Tomáš Kocka Jusko add the following: “The subject matter chose us. We are reflecting our feelings, the context, the conditions, and the time in which we are preparing the project. We are working with how objects communicate with viewers and how visitors move within the installation. We are interested in the time they spend within the space, and what they will contemplate – even if this process is always unforeseeable to a certain extent.”

Curator Peter Sit views the project as a whole that transcends the Central European context: “The subject matter is highly topical and comprehensible. It reflects situations we are experiencing today all over the world, and viewers will be able to relate to it from a variety of perspectives.”

The Czech and Slovak Pavilion: 100 Years of Existence

The Czech and Slovak Pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale in Venice was opened in 1926, in close proximity to the pavilions of France, Germany, and Great Britain. The exhibition of the state pavilion in Venice was a prestigious act of representation of the First Czechoslovak Republic. The pavilion symbolised the consolidation of the cultural and political significance of the newly established state of Czechoslovakia.

The building was designed by the architect Otakar Novotný, one of the key representatives of modern architecture. As a professional experienced in the field of exhibition architecture, Novotný adapted this modern pavilion to the environment of Venice through its classicising conception in the form of its symmetrical composition, portal, and lateral pillars, crowned with a steel skylight providing lighting from above.

Despite the breakup of Czechoslovakia, the pavilion remains within the ownership of the Czech and Slovak Republics, and since 2024 the partner of the pavilion has been J&T Banka, which, in addition to supporting art, has strong ties to Czech and Slovak cultural heritage.

The upcoming anniversary exhibition will be complemented by other projects prepared by the National Gallery Prague. In collaboration with Czech Television, a unique documentary is being produced that not only focuses on the Czech and Slovak Pavilion and the history of showcasing local art at the Biennale, but also offers a behind-the-scenes look at the preparation and execution of the exhibitions at the Biennale. The documentary will air this autumn. At the same time, the first comprehensive publication dedicated to the Czech and Slovak Pavilion in Venice, edited by Helena Huber-Doudová, curator at the National Gallery Prague, will be released. The book will explore various perspectives on the history of the Biennale and the participation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but also on the cooperation between the two countries and their current approach to the Biennale.

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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.

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.

Since 2019, Michal Novotný has been the director of the Collection of Art after 1945 at the National Gallery Prague, and since 2024 he has also served as the commissioner of the Czech Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In addition, he teaches at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. His research focuses on the identity of Central and Eastern European art. His recent projects include an exhibition of the new collection 1939–2021: The End of the Black-and-White Era with Eva Skopalová and Adéla Janíčková at the National Gallery Prague in 2023, as well as collaboration with the Centre Pompidou on the festival MOVE: Intimacy as Resistance at the National Gallery Prague and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Flower Union project at the Council of the European Union in Brussels, both in 2022.