Katarína Hládeková has been focusing on the life story of Russian emigrant Matrena Makovická, who in the 1920s followed her husband, writer and doctor Dušan Makovický to Slovakia to live in seclusion after his suicide. Over the course of three years, the artist produced a series of exhibitions that, through Matrena’s fate, commented on issues of national identity, the stigma of emigration and the social status of the “woman of a great man”.

Another possible interpretation of the turbulent life vicissitudes of Matrena and Dušan Makovický, who met as members of a community of followers of Leo Tolstoy’s teachings, concerns the disappointment of not being able to fulfill one's own ideals and convictions. Tolstoyism can be understood as a determination to live an authentic life based on the values of love, social justice, harmony with nature and faith, and a consistent rejection of social conventions. Similar values, incidentally, are embodied in contemporary ethical appeals to environmental responsibility and social emancipation.

Katarína’s reflection does not slip into a one-sided or romanticizing interpretation or redressing of wrongs but hints at the complexity and ambiguity of the story, its actors, and the social climate of the time. The current exhibition takes Matrena’s story even further beyond its original historical starting point. With the participation of Václav Magid, it includes a commentary on those who create an interpretation of the world and its laws from historical realities, of which Matrena may be a part who approach this activity with great seriousness, even pathos, but also with anguish. Here the actor in the story and its possible narrator meet. What is remarkable is how close they are.