FRANKFURT.- Anna Hulačová’s figurative sculptures combine influences from Surrealism, Socialist Realism, and Czech folk art to create a distinctive cosmos of their own. From October 1, 2026, to January 10, 2027, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is presenting the artist’s first solo exhibition in Germany, coinciding with the Czech Republic’s appearance as Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2026.
Hulačová, who grew up on a farm, draws on a deep connection to plants and animals in her artistic practice, exploring the relationship between humans, nature, and technology from an ecofeminist perspective. Her work addresses the loss of biodiversity, declining insect populations, and the consequences of industrial agriculture. The bee—a symbol of collective labor, ecological crisis, and mystical immortality—is a central metaphor in her work, but its role extends beyond the symbolic: Hulačová creates her works in collaboration with her own bee colonies. Together, the artist and the bees produce hybrid creatures and faceless science-fiction figures in which concrete and honeycomb, the organic and the technological, nature and machine merge.
The exhibition at the Schirn presents sculptures, reliefs, and installations, many of which were created specifically for the occasion. The exhibition’s title refers to the figure of Abundantia, the Roman personification of prosperity and abundance. Her attribute, the cornucopia, magically pours forth its riches, while the resources, effort, and labor on which prosperity depends remain invisible.
The exhibition “Anna Hulačová: Abundantia” is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the Moravian Library as part of the country’s Guest of Honour appearance at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2026, with additional support from the German-Czech Future Fund as well as the foundations Dr. Hans Feith und Dr. Elisabeth Feith-Stiftung and Kummer-Vanotti-Stiftung. The education and outreach program is supported by the Polytechnische Gesellschaft Foundation, Frankfurt am Main.
SEBASTIAN BADEN, DIRECTOR OF THE SCHIRN: “Anna Hulačová is one of the most compelling artists of the younger generation in the Czech Republic. Her engagement with the legacy of socialist visual traditions and the cultural landscape they shaped has given rise to an important perspective. With her distinctive artistic language, Hulačová demonstrates a keen awareness of pressing issues, such as the industrialization of agriculture, the consequences of monoculture, and the loss of biodiversity.”
MARTINA WEINHART, CURATOR OF THE EXHIBITION: “Anna Hulačová addresses our alienated relationship with nature. Trained as a wood sculptor, she creates her work through an unusual process of co-creation with her bee colonies, which swarm into the cavities of her sculptures and fill them with honeycomb. Hulačová brings these elements together in science-fiction tableaux of an ecofeminist future that combine utopia and dystopia, antiquity and the present, myth and a radical engagement with the here and now.”
For her solo exhibition at the Schirn, Anna Hulačová has created two distinct installations. The first gallery features imposing machine-like sculptures in concrete, such as Engine (2026) and Big Machine (2026). Concrete reliefs suspended from the ceiling feature delicate graphite drawings and are combined with carved linden wood or honeycomb. Here, Hulačová references the reliefs commonly found on socialist-era buildings, drawing on familiar motifs and forms from this visual tradition, such as upward-reaching stalks of grain. At the Schirn, she combines these elements with the sculptures Alien Bees (2021 and 2026) to surreal effect. The insect-like figures have humanoid features and recall comics and science-fiction films from the 1950s.
The second gallery features the newly produced installation Still Life / Still Alive (2026), a food conveyor belt flanked by metallic, clinical-looking walls. Figures of female workers are positioned throughout the space. At the end of the conveyor belt, fruit has accumulated in a large pile, while one worker attempts to tackle the abundance of produce with a whisk. The work also references conventions of representation in Western (male-dominated) art history, in which women were frequently associated with an abundance of fruit, as in sixteenth-century depictions of market scenes. At the same time, it points to the exploitation of (female) labor in food production, both historically and today, as well as to women’s role as consumers at the end of a long, highly specialized and mechanized chain of production.
The second work in the gallery, After Bugonia (2025), addresses the dairy industry. Three female workers in rubber boots, work coats, and headscarves recall the figures of Socialist Realism in both bearing and aesthetic. This totalitarian art promoted the archetype of the mother through concepts such as land, earth, and fertility. The workers’ heads are either faceless or filled with honeycomb. The title After Bugonia derives from an ancient myth according to which colonies of bees were spontaneously generated from the carcass of a bull. The motif of the bee thus brings together multiple layers of meaning. As a female collective, bees—evoked in expressions such as “busy as a bee”—also become a symbol of the oft invisible labor of women across different societies.
ANNA HULAČOVÁ (b. 1984 in Sušice, Czechoslovakia, now Czech Republic) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where she studied in the Studio of Intermedia Work II under Jiří Příhoda. She has exhibited her work at various institutions and exhibitions, including CEAAC in Strasbourg, the National Gallery Prague, Galeria Arsenał in Białystok, House of Arts Brno, Art Encounters Biennial 2021 in Timișoara, MO.CO. Montpellier, the Centre Pompidou and Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the Regional Gallery in Liberec, the East Slovak Gallery in Košice, the 2019 Aichi Triennale in Japan, Casino Luxembourg, Baltic Triennial 13, Prague City Gallery, Gdańsk City Gallery, and the 22nd Bienal de Arte Contemporânea Sesc_Videobrasil in São Paulo.
