An exhibition at Černá kostka, a space dedicated to showcasing the GMU Moving Image Collection, presents a new video by Erik Sikora Narwhal Navigation (2026), which loosely follows on from the artist’s earlier works The Endless Exhibition and The Invention of Navigation (2007). In these works, Sikora has long explored the relationship between the body, landscape, technology, and speech. The starting point is movement through the landscape and verbal dialogue. The artist further develops the motif of mapping the transformed conditions of perception and interpretation of the world. New technologies—whose current form was scarcely imaginable at the time the earlier videos were created—now enter into the relationship between the body, landscape, recording, and speech. Curator Anna Horák Zemanová will guide visitors through the exhibition Navigace narvala at the Černá kostka venue. 

The artist is primarily interested in their rhetorical power and ability to fluidly generate responses, to mask uncertainty with confident language, and to create a confident impression even where meaning makes no sense. The new video explores the motif of performative movement through the landscape and its commentary via a fictional bodily extension inspired by the horn—or rather, the tooth—of a narwhal.

In his work, Sikora uses humor to explore serious themes, such as questions about the changing nature of the human desire for knowledge—which is currently reflected in our everyday use of internet search engines—the functioning of the art world, and the environmental crisis. His work offers an absurd yet critical perspective on contemporary society and art itself.

Erik Sikora (*1986) is a Slovak conceptual artist, video artist, performer, and singer-songwriter. From 2005 to 2011, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he attended several studios: from 2005 to 2007, the New Media Studio I under the guidance of Michael Bielický and Markus Huemer; and in 2007, Vladimír Skrepl’s Painting Studio II. In 2008, he completed the studio of visiting professor Magdalena Jetelová, and from 2008 to 2011, he continued his studies in the Studio of Conceptual Art under Miloš Šejn and Tomáš Vaněk. In 2009, he completed an internship at the University of the Arts London, Camberwell College of Fine Arts, and in 2010, he attended the studio of visiting artist Florian Reither from the Gelitin group.

The central feature of Erik Sikora’s work—he also goes by the pseudonym Džumelec—is a neo-Dadaist approach that frees the viewer from stereotypical perceptions of art and leads them to an authentic experience through play. In his work, he uses DIY instructions, records live events, and asks all sorts of trivial questions to which he himself seeks answers.