Markéta Dlouhá works with upcycling and recycling materials to create her own paper, such as old clothes, plant fibers, and old paper. She also uses ecological printing colors and experiments with natural pigments which she collects from nature. Working in the cross-section of various mediums, from drawing to embroidery, printing to bookmaking, her works combine surrealism with natural shapes, landscapes, water, and animals.
During her stay, she worked on her artist book, book of stones. Inspired by the landscape and all the interesting geological formations in our area along with her connection with nature and her health, she has been drawing, embossing, printmaking, and writing poetry about stones.
In this book, she contemplates mortality as a feature of "life". In her mother tongue, Czech, the stones are referred to as unliving nature, which is something never resonated with her. The texts in the book are research for empathy and understanding for stones, where she tries to see them as the human body, searching for mortality/immortality. Markéta also gave an amazing paper-making workshop for our team and other artists in the residency, which we are ever so grateful for.
In 2023, Markéta came back to MAR to work on plant&seed clay sculptures. She collected plants, soil, and seeds from local plants, and experimented with different mixtures to create drop-shaped objects that were a comment on the lack of rain. Due to harsh heat and unexpected heavy rainfall, the project and objects had to take a new form. The idea behind her work is to create seed dispensers as a site-specific installation and let the wind and rain do the job.
Photos by Kristina Gajdarikova, Nora Kvarnstörm and Markéta Dlouhá