Opening of our much popular December exhibition. This year, the Christmas Tree becomes Christmas Forest.

Authors’ Christmas Forest: Need
Authors: Collective Spodní 27
Curators: Zuzana Šrámková and Jakub Adamec
9/12/2021–9/1/2022

This year's author's Christmas tree, the seventh in a row, is more of a Christmas forest. The forest represents a metaphor for the collective way of creation chosen by this year's team of authors. The members of the Spodní 27 collective live and work in the Jirská settlement area in Ostrava-Přívoz, which struggles with social exclusion. The collective works with local children and young people, who were invited to participate at the creation of the form of the tree. When the exhibition is over, we plan to move the object to a wooded area in the Jirská settlement, where it will serve as a place for locals to meet and play.

Kolektiv Spodní 27 is a group of artists active in the Jirská settlement in Ostrava in 27, Spodní Street. The collective is open to its environment and aims at destroying barriers between art production and audiences as well as between socially-excluded locations and privileged Ostrava neighbourhoods. Kolektiv Spodní 27 wants to create useful and understandable art while not reproducing mass art; to create non-consumerist, participative art; to not narrate but communicate. Site-specific art cannot be created without people, who are an inherent part of the environment without which they can't identify with the art scene.