Matyáš Grimmich↓

About the work

The “We” Stories

#community #individuality #mental health #drawing

What is your graduation work about?

I write stories. I write stories from different sides of the spectrum of a community: if it is absent, I write about anxiety, abandonment, individualism – the impossibility of establishing a relationship. I write about the intrusion of the social system – which is not a community – into individual health and illness. And on the other hand, when a community turns monstrous, I write stories on how it becomes a false unity. The self dissolves into “we”. Such a community becomes a place built around violence. I try to map out the subject of a community – and often the absence of it – through my stories. I am trying to understand what a community is and what other subjects and desires behind the idea are. If I do not know where to go with my stories, partly fictional and partly from my immediate surroundings, I try to go through the drawing. It started as illustrating stories and continues as an attempt to capture a community without words and perhaps thus find a more fitting way to describe it.

What do you do besides your graduation work?

I have been long cooperating with Anna Chrtková and Karolina Schön. We move on the verge between workshop, performance, and video and talk about collectivity, health, and illness. In addition, I work in a non-profit, with groups often labeled as sick – because violence or bullying is going on. We are trying to find a good form of a community, provided it exists at all.

In what conditions would you like to work on your graduation work?

For most of my studies at AVU, I had a problem finding where to fit in. All the time, I was straddled between various disciplines that might not relate to visual arts. I wish AVU were more prepared for interdisciplinary cooperation and thinking.

What would you imagine to be an alternative culmination of your studies at AVU, in place of the defense of your graduation work?

I think the graduation work defense is probably the last thing that should be happening. I am waiting for some demystification of art at AVU. Maybe we could graduate with a plan for how we will use our artistic skills after school and how we will survive.