Dagmar Šubrtová (*1973) is an artist, sculptor, curator and organizer of cultural life. She intensively cares for the legacy of the Kladno artists Jitka and Květa Válová. For example, she organized the international interdisciplinary project On the Border of Solitude. She is co-author of the book Průvodce: Contemporary Works of Art in Landscape, Prague 2014. Her deep interest is in layers of memory, the loss of historical context, the overturning of geological layers and social structures in a region heavily impacted by coal mining. She brings to the cultural sphere an awareness of the industrially devastated "no-man's land", deep mine tailings, landscape, industrial heritage and ecology. 

"Specifically, these are crushed limestone samples from the mined quarries around Mikulov. I also used clays and loams collected from defunct and active brickworks and layered them into fine reliefs with the help of salts and acid solutions. I have been working in a similar way for a long time. I concentrate on sites with an industrial past and for some of my works I collect material from former quarries or heaps, so-called spoil heaps, after coal mining or iron working. Together with the geologist Radek Mikuláš we then analyse the composition of the collected samples and how they were formed. In the exhibition it is possible to see images that are created by a controlled process. We layer the collected materials with a binder and other pigments on the image. I let them react with each other, re-layer the resulting structure with more ground natural material. I add salt, which speeds up some of the crystallization processes.

I work in many different ways, but all of my processes are always somehow related to the perception of our existence and the relationships that define us, by way of exploring the environment, the body and the mind. Some of my paintings may resemble a view of the starry sky, they are partly hand embroidered. As I embroider the starry sky onto dark velvet, I enter a state of meditation through repetitive manual activity. Occasionally I find myself sinking below the surface of unconsciousness and silence. I try to become aware of the interconnection of the principles of heaven and earth. I realize that no light exists by itself, it comes from the thermonuclear reactions of distant stars, and through vast processes it reaches us, it is actually a miracle."