BAU Residency: Eva Koťátková
June–July 2025

Eva Koťátková’s work addresses the social, institutional and physical structures of everyday life – the rules and restrictions which shape how we think, learn, move, behave and create. She often focuses on the situation of groups or individuals who are excluded, discriminated or silenced for various reasons. Through installations, performances, and community-based workshops, the artist addresses how systems of care, communication, and imagination shape our interactions with other beings and environments. Her use of narrative structures—often drawing on personal stories, dreams, and non-verbal expressions—creates empathetic platforms where participants and audiences are encouraged to reconsider the boundaries between human and non-human life.

During the summer of 2025, Eva spent a month as a guest artist in Alto Adige / Südtirol, living and working in the small village of Karthaus / Certosa. The village, nestled at the entrance of Val Senales / Schnalstal, has a long tradition of sheep transhumance — the seasonal movement of flocks across the valley, over glaciers, and across national borders. While exploring the interconnectedness of human and more-than-human worlds, Eva was drawn to the historic Carthusian monastery in Val Senales, which remained active for over 400 years until 1782. The starting point of her research was the monks’ disciplined life of silence —their vegetarian diet sustained by fish, and the way the fish were carried up the mountain in wooden barrels.
The image of a fish stranded on dry land became a central metaphor in her residency — a poetic yet unsettling symbol of vulnerability and adaptation. This condition became a space for reflection: can our imagination be stimulated to think anew? How can we learn to live with uncertainty? A fish out of water became not just a symbol of despair, but a question about the power of imagination — to survive, to adapt, and to envision otherwise.


Unteroberwasser
20 July – 31 August 2025
The outcome of the residency was a site-specific installation for the exhibition Unteroberwasser, curated by BAU and presented in the public space of Karthaus / Certosa from July 20 to August 31, 2025. In the Body of a Fish Out of Water — A FISH CLASSROOM, an outdoor classroom where more-than-human beings also become teachers. Inspired by the landscape and the cultural history of the Carthusians. The roof of the fish classroom — a 20-meter-long textile — remains in Alto Adige / Südtirol and will be used to prototype children’s workshops in the region. It will then travel to the Orlické Mountains during the Woods Forest Symposium at the end of July 2026 to be further activated.


Performance as part of Unteroberwasser
19 July 2025
During the opening of Unteroberwasser, the artist performed a live embodiment of the “fish out of water,” accompanied by curator and BAU co-founder Lisa Mazza, who read aloud a text written by Eva during her residency — an invitation to re-learn how we exist, function, and relate to the world around us.


Children’s Workshop with Ingrid Hora
28 July – 1 August 2025
For one week, the fish classroom became an active learning space for children from the village through the workshop Wie fängt man eine Wolke? (How to Catch a Cloud?), led by artist Ingrid Hora. A group of fifteen children aged 6 to 10 — all familiar with the local landscape and its inhabitants — gathered inside the fish-shaped installation to explore pressing ecological questions, particularly the global and local scarcity of water. Through marbling, embroidery, and sun printing, they created new cloud stories and a collective textile that became part of Ingrid Hora’s artwork presented in the exhibition. The workshop activated In the Body of a Fish Out of Water — A FISH CLASSROOM as a real classroom, where active thinking and ecological awareness could unfold together.

Eva Koťátková's work has been the focus of solo exhibitions held at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024); Nottingham Contemporary (2023); Arter Foundation, Istanbul (2023). Among many other group shows, Eva Koťátková has participated in documenta, Kassel (2022); the 16th Istanbul Biennial (2019), JIWA: the Jakarta Biennial (2017), the New Museum’s Triennial, NY(2015); ar/ge Kunst, Bolzano (2009). 

Photos by Eva Koťátková, Daniela Brugger and Frida Carazzato.