Jindrich Chalupecky Award 2026

Jury

The international jury consisted of Denisa Bytelová, educator, critic, theorist, and curator of contemporary art; Anna Gritz, director of Haus am Waldsee in Berlin, Hana Janečková, curator and educator at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Valentinas Klimašauskas, independent curator and writer, director of the Center for Contemporary Art in Vilnius, Marika Kupková, curator, theorist, and educator, Maria Lind, curator and director of the Kin Museum of Contemporary Art in Kiruna, selected from the highest number of applicants in its history this year.

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.

Artists

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.