Presentation of Ester Geislerová in the New Media 2 studio

The exhibition What We Should’ve Said but Didn’t explores the possibilities and limits of mutual communication in intimate relationships. In a series of ten videos, Geislerová distinctively and playfully combines acting, therapy, humour, and surprise. The protagonists of her short films search for and test out ways of understanding and empathising with others. The artist carefully selected the participants from among her closest friends, approaching actresses, actors, and even a psychotherapist, and gave them a performative task: to interpret a text written for them by their partners or by Geislerová herself. She also worked with the fact that some of the actors were not told that the text had been written for them by a loved one. This leads to a kind of dual understanding of reality because the very personal and intimate text interpreted by the actor is coming from the mouth of the person who is meant to be hearing it. The actors were also allowed to co-create the persona of their characters, including the costumes, masks, sets, and props. The creation of the videos consisted in a close directorial collaboration between the artist and the performers, making the process itself an important part of the project.

Czech artist and actress who moves across various artistic fields. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in the field of New Media II. She spent a year and a half in the Intermedia Confrontation studio at the UMPRUM in Prague as part of her studies. She primarily works with video installations and explores the relationship between image and sound. As part of her own artistic work, she has embarked on the field of exploring the existential banality of human lives, placing herself alongside those authors who explore human identity, often using themselves. She tries to meaningfully incorporate reflections on her own life, her diverse professional experience, humor, film processing and acting experience into her work. Ester is the curator of the project “Therapy by Sharing” and since 2019 has been collaborating on lectures (Therapy by Sharing LIVE and RESET) with couple therapist and psychotherapist Honza Vojtek, with whom they address the common topic of how online communication affects our relationships and communication itself. He is preparing an exhibition of his father, calligrapher and Japanologist Peter Geisler, a film about him “Two Children of Ink”, a children's performance “About Mobiles and Children”. An extensive video installation of ten short films “What We Should Have Said and Didn't Say”, on the topic of relationships and communication, was shown at the Kunsthalle from June to September 2024.

Because Ester has been analyzing partner and parental relationships for a long time and her other projects also deal with motherhood (e.g. Liquid Motherly Love from 2017), I invite the collective of mother artists, Mothers Artlovers, to her presentation.The presentation is public, i.e. invite whoever you deem appropriate. I look forward to seeing you and Ester! Darina