Bety Krňanská is a Czech artist living and working in Prague and Athens. Between 2014 and 2019 she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, in the painting studio led by Jiří Černický. In her final year she completed residencies in the studio of Christopher Ruckaberle in Leipzig and in the studio of Justin Fitzpatrick in Prague. In 2019 she was a finalist of the Czech Art Critics’ Award for Young Painters. In 2021 the group exhibition Wom*n-Rose-Bone-Song, in which she took part and which was curated by Hana Janečková, was featured in issue 68 of Spike magazine. Her work is held in numerous private and international art collections. Among her exhibitions are the project Unexpected Encounters at Galerie AMU, a show at Berlinskej Model, a presentation at the 8smička gallery and an exhibition at Display Gallery curated by Hana Janečková, who also curated this year’s Czech pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

The roles of woman and mother have become research material for Bety Krňanská. Through her own experience of these two roles she looks at the broader development of society, at gender dynamics, emancipation and the environmental pressures placed upon them. She explores how notions such as care, upbringing or domestic manual labour, so often tied to the female body, are being transformed by today’s demand for performance, by mechanisation and by emancipation.

"My artistic practice is a constant experiment. I use old techniques to create new connections and unexpected contexts," the artist notes. Combining traditional craft techniques such as patchwork quilting with contemporary creative strategies and materials such as metals, sublimation dyes or work with artificial intelligence, she responds in a non-linear way to the past and the present alike, as well as to the tension between the domestic and the industrial. She sets delicacy in close contrast with aggression, confronts tradition with progress and swaps high heels for car bodywork. In her work Bety Krňanská makes the boundaries of female identity visible and, with every new piece, crosses them.

Publications

2024 

SOKL, RÁM, PODSTAVEC, catalogue of the group exhibition at 8smička G.

A SCATTERING OF SALTS, publication of the ACG Collection, Athens/GR

2022 

WORLDS, publication accompanying the group exhibition at the Drawing Triennale, PL

The Generation N, Contemporary Czech Art

MODEL, publication of the Berlinskej Model gallery

2021 

SPIKE magazine 68 - Patriarchy, group exhibition Wom*n - Rose - Song - Bone

2018 

Pocta Suknu, Textile in the Context of Art