
HIDDEN Podcast: Markéta Špundová & Viktorie Macanová on Feminism, Tradition & Christianity.
In the new episode of the HIDDEN Podcast, we sit down with Markéta Špundová and Viktorie Macánová, the artists behind the exhibition MOTOROVKA at HIDDEN UMPRUM. We talk about where the deliberately provocative title came from, playing on the contrast between the "rough" chainsaw and the "domestic" bábovka (a traditional Czech bundt cake), and what that has to do with how we still divide men's and women's work today.Viktorie describes the making of her photo editorial Women Are No Bábovkas, shot at her mom's cottage, including the styling, the casting, and how she turns the Czech rural stereotype (a man with a chainsaw, a woman at the stove) on its head. Markéta talks about her project The Ten Commandments of Masturbation, born out of her Christian upbringing, the shame around sexuality, and how it gradually grew into a longer-term interest in feminism within the church.We go through the two artists' shared history, seven years since they first met at UMPRUM, through the collaboration between the ceramics and photography studios, the exhibition Husí kůže (Goosebumps), the project Beránci (a reinterpretation of the Easter lamb tradition), and now Motorovka. We speak openly about how hard it is to make a living as an artist in Czechia, the reality of selling photography versus painting, and why both of them are currently looking for a "normal" job on the side.We also touch on topics rarely discussed openly in the art world: peeing in public in broad daylight (and why it's still a problem for women), tattoos as a late rebellion against religious upbringing, and Viktorie's thesis on authentic family portraiture as a counterpoint to commercial studio photography.
