A prominent Slovak artist, Ilona Németh, will present herself at the House of Arts Ústí nad Labem with an entirely new large-scale project that continues the rich line of environmentally oriented works latent in her practice since the early 1990s. In her latest project, the artist responds to ongoing climate change, which in her home region of southern Slovakia is manifested, among other things, by the disappearance of thuja trees that are gradually dying, drying out, and turning brown. These vanishing trees and shrubs, present in Central Europe since the 16th century, have become the subject of Németh’s monitoring and systematic collection of all available information.

The exhibition project prepared for the House of Arts Ústí nad Labem and titled Fragile Gardens in Adaptation naturally follows Németh’s long-term interest in the theme of gardens, which she has developed in various cultural, social, environmental, and socio-economic contexts. In recent years, this interest has been manifested, for example, in her Floating Gardens project (Garden of the Future and Healing Garden), presented at documenta fifteen in Kassel in 2022, and in a broader sense through the extensive international research, artistic, and exhibition project Eastern Sugar, which has been ongoing since 2017.

Ilona Németh: Fragile Gardens in Adaptation

Gallery 1

September 17 – November 22, 2025

The opening of the exhibition will take place on Wednesday, September 17, 2025, at 6 p.m.

A guided tour of the exhibition with the artist and curator will begin at 5 p.m.

More information: https://duul.cz/cs/exhibitions/ilona-nemeth-krehke-zahrady-v-adaptaci