Oto Hudec: Floating Arboretum

Oto Hudec works with an archive of stories, telling of a collective effort when a united community of activists prevented deforestation and the destruction of trees. We believe that Floating Arboretum’s stories can spark transformative imagination and that they can be inspirational in our everyday lives. A recurring motif in Oto Hudec’s work is escapism, the desire to save what is almost impossible to save in a given civilizational setting, through flying, swimming. Even the trees in the Giardini, or Venice, are threatened with extinction due to climate change and rising sea levels. Oto calls for their rescue, as well as for the rescue of other endangered trees in the world. He contemplates an arboretum, a symbolic utopian place, a sanctuary for trees threatened by human expansion and extravagance. The project is an imaginative glimpse into a dystopian future in which we select and save trees by moving them to a safe (fictional) arboretum. Different timelines intersect here, the present protests against deforestation, the felling of trees in different parts of the world, the climate crisis, and the imaginary dystopian future of saving them.

The endangered trees will be painted by Oto Hudec directly on the façade of the pavilion. The mural will be accompanied in the immediate surroundings of the pavilion by a site-specific installation of a boat with a sculpture of a seed, and by an audio piece and performance. Anyone can get involved in Floating Arboretum via https://floatingarboretum.sng.sk, where they can nominate for rescue their choice of any specific tree with an upsetting fate.

The project curator is Lýdia Pribišová, curator of Kunsthalle Bratislava and editor-in-chief of Flash Art Czech and Slovak Edition. It is a commission by the Slovak National Gallery and commissar of the project is Monika Krčmárik.

Oto Hudec´s Floating Arboretum will be presented by the Slovak National Gallery at the Czech and Slovak Pavilion in Giardini in Venice alongside Eva Koťátková´s The Heart of a Giraffe in Captivity is Twelve Kilos Lighter representing the Czech Republic and curated by Hana Janečková.

Oto Hudec is a multi-media artist, he creates videos, murals, animations, sculptures, sound pieces, and works for public spaces on the subjects of immigration, refugees and the effects of globalization on the environment. His research on the topics of climate change and ecology is often focused, instead of on new scientific solutions, on how nomadic and indigenous people achieved sustainability. Currently an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Technical University, Košice, Slovakia, he is represented by the Gandy Gallery, Bratislava. Recently, his projects were presented in the Gandy Gallery, Bratislava (2024); East Slovak Gallery, Košice (2022); AlbumArte, Rome, Italy (2022); Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary (2022); Kunsthalle Bratislava (2021, 2019, 2017); tranzit.sk, Bratislava (2021); Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2017); De Appel, Amsterdam, Holland (2017); and in many others.

Curator Lýdia Pribišová is based in Bratislava. Since 2006 she has worked as an editor of the magazine Flash Art Czech & Slovak Edition, and since 2015 she has been its editor-in-chief. From 2020 until 2024 she was President of the Slovak section of AICA, and since 2020 she has worked as a curator at Kunsthalle Bratislava. Between 2013 and 2015 she was a project coordinator at tranzit.sk, where she also realised several curatorial projects. In 2019 she was one of the curators of Kaunas Biennale in Lithuania. As a curator, she is interested in the boundaries of art, participatory projects, and ecological themes; she curated the A Plant programme at Kunsthalle Bratislava from 2022 until 2023, which included a programme in Bratislava’s public space that responded to the issue of green space in the city.

Sound piece and performance: Fero Király
Poeticization of stories: Juliana Sokolová
Choreography: Petra Fornayová
Dress designer: Michaela Bednárová
Architect: Tomáš Boroš