Jindřich Chalupecký Award 2026 has been announced—this year’s laureates are Yuliya Bokhan, Tereza Kalousová, and The Laundry Collective

The 2026 edition of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award received the highest number of entries in the history of the prize. The international jury appreciated the breadth and variety of the applications, noting particularly strong participation from artists outside of Prague. Many of the applicants presented unexpected perspectives and previously unknown practices based on a variety of backgrounds and lived experiences. There was surprising experimentation with artistic media as well as explorations of the diverse possibilities of visual language. The entries also included innovative approaches to political and activist projects that brought together urgent concerns for environmental and social justice and responses to the ongoing tragedies of war.

The jury decided to award The Laundry Collective for their long-term and systematic work with socially engaged issues, in which they address the experiences of exclusion, marginalization, and poverty with a unique artistic voice. The work of Yuliya Bokhan offers powerful insights into existential themes such as social uprootedness and anxiety, at the same time retaining the charm of the unspoken and impressively weaving together references from across the history of painting. Tereza Kalousová’s practice inventively combines object-based work, architectural thinking, and video installation. The central motif of her work is deformation—of the body, of temporal perception, and of movement in a post-internet reality.

“We are delighted that the international jury had a record number of entries to choose from, which proves that the Jindřich Chalupecký Award is a respected and relevant prize, especially with a view to the diversity of the applicants in terms of nationality, age, and chosen media. Personally, I would also like to point out that this is the first time in the thirty-seven years of the JChA’s existence that all of the laureates are women. On account of structural barriers such as the pay gap as well as the social prejudices that women still frequently encounter in their careers, I see this as an important moment in the history of the award,” said Tereza Jindrová, who took over as director of the Jindřich Chalupecký Society last year.

The Laureates of the 2026 Jindřich Chalupecký Award

Yuliya Bokhan (1998) is a Belarusian artist who lives and works in the Czech Republic. She graduated from the painting studio headed by Vasil Artamonov at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Brno University of Technology. She also studied at the Belarusian State Academy of Arts in Minsk, where she specialized in monumental decorative art, with a practicum in iconography. She also trained in Denis Chubukov’s mosaic studio, which creates large-format mosaic panels for churches.

In her work, the author focuses on working with space and ways of creating places where everyone can find their way to hidden content based on the images and sounds presented and their interaction with each other. Using painting, collage, video, and sound, she creates multimedia works at the intersection of painting, object, and installation, which can be intense and expressive as well as subtle and sensitive. Her works combine references to spiritual and historical motifs with personal, existential, and psychological reflection. She is interested in the tension between external and internal reality, between the self and others, and between the different layers of her own experience.

She focuses on moments that lead to misunderstanding, conflict, and the feeling that true connection is impossible. Through these themes, she explores contemporary issues of interpersonal—and even nonhuman—relationships and the search for sincerity with regard to oneself and the world. Bokhan has presented her works at institutions such as Galerie NTK in Prague, Zaazrak Dornych in Brno, the Gallery of Fine Art in Náchod, and the Municipal Gallery in Třinec.

Tereza Kalousová (1998) is a visual artist and architect who works between Prague and Amsterdam. She studied architecture under Ivan Kroupa and later Eva Franch i Gilabert at UMPRUM in Prague, where she also attended courses taught by Maja Smrekar and Sam Lewitt in the Visiting Artist Studio. She also completed the Architectural Design program led by Nick Axel at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and in 2024 she began studying in the Dirty Art Department at the Sandberg Instituut in the Netherlands. She is currently pursuing a postgraduate program in the Video Studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Brno University of Technology.

In her practice, Kalousová works with various media, including video, sculpture, installation, and text, reflecting on how digital technologies and contemporary economic and political systems influence our perception of our own bodies, time, and space. She is interested in limit situations, where established forms and systems cannot proceed smoothly, nor can they completely break down. She focuses on how we try to orient ourselves in such moments and what happens to the human body, to intimacy, and to language, which sometimes ceases to function. Her work is based on personal experience, which she uses as a tool to grasp broader social and systemic connections.

In the Czech context, Kalousová’s work has been presented at venues such as etc. gallery, VI PER Gallery, and City Surfer Office in Prague as well as Galerie TIC (with Erika Velická) and the FFA Gallery (with Šimon Chlouba) in Brno. Her work has also been exhibited abroad, for example, at the Czech Center in New York and in Amsterdam at the PAKT Foundation and De Hallen. Screenings of the artist’s films have been held in London, New York, Vienna, and Amsterdam. Her short film Vanilla Sky won the Audience Award in the competition section Other Visions CZ at the 2025 PAF Olomouc festival.

The Laundry Collective is a group of women who have come together with the aim of challenging stereotypes and prejudices about homeless people. Through texts, drawings, films, and live actions, they draw attention to the reality of social exclusion and the feeling of not belonging in public spaces, which should, in principle, be accessible to everyone. They draw on their personal experiences with life on the streets and their knowledge of the systemic barriers that prevent people from living with dignity.

Since 2023 the collective has been operating a mobile laundry during the summer months, offering people who don’t have access to sanitary facilities the opportunity to wash and dry their clothes. Here laundering is not a charitable service but rather a way to foster relationships and provide a temporary safe environment and space to meet.

The Laundry Collective was founded in 2019 during a three-month residency for women in need (called Magdalena’s Laundry) at the Prague gallery INI Prostor. Today the collective consists of Balu, Helena, Linda, Monika, Daša, Magdalena, and the dog Aranka. In 2022 the collective presented a participatory installation at the Prague City Gallery as part of the Biennale Matter of Art. Their film Expressing the Desire for the Impossible won first prize at the 2023 Marienbad Film Festival. The Laundry Collective has presented its work at institutions such as the Municipal Gallery Litomyšl (2025), the Kyiv Biennial in Vienna (2023), the festival 4+4 Days in Motion in Prague (2021), and Kunsthal Gent (2020), among others. In 2025 the collective published an original book titled Píčou ke zdi (Cunt Against the Wall), and they have long been collaborating with the contemporary art initiative tranzit.cz.

In addition to laureates Yuliya Bokhan, Tereza Kalousová, and The Laundry Collective, the jury awarded a special mention to the group Stop Genocide in Gaza, whose application stood out with its political messaging in response to the silence of cultural institutions in the face of the genocide in Gaza.

Exhibition of the Laureates at PLATO Ostrava

The opening ceremony of the 2026 Jindřich Chalupecký Award exhibition will take place on 21 October 2026 at PLATO Ostrava. In addition to the artistic projects of this year’s laureates, it will include an accompanying program with guided tours, events for children, and a School of Participatory Art Mediation. The foreign guest of the autumn exhibition will be Sophie Jung, an artist based in London and Basel.