Veronika Zapletalová – I Am a Tree

The exhibition stems from the artist’s long-standing interest in the landscape and the transformations of the environment in which we live. Through her work and personal reflections, she explores questions about the relationship between humans and trees, how we perceive one another, and our place in the living world.

Starting from specific places and the stories of trees, the artist moves on to reflections on time, memory, and the interconnectedness of all living things. What changes when we try to look at the world from a tree’s perspective?

“If we are all one and everything is connected to everything else, then I, too, am that felled tree, and I am also the tree standing next to it that remained.”

Veronika Zapletalová works with the landscape and adapts her media to specific projects. She graduated from UMPRUM as a sculptor, and a sense of plasticity is evident in her drawings, paintings, and photographs. Among her major bodies of work are a photographic installation, a book, and a film currently in production Chatařství – Architecture of Human Dreams and Possibilities, in which she views cottage structures as sculptures of human dreams. For the past eight years, through the Veleslavín Castle Laboratory project, she has been exploring the extent to which we, as artists, are able to influence, develop, and shape a place through our focused attention. She also works there as a curator and exhibition programmer. In recent years, she has returned to pen-and-ink drawing and painting, working in the field, using time-lapse techniques, and in large formats, often in Scandinavia. The resulting works sometimes remain in the landscape. She also studied art history at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University; photography at the Institute of Technical Photography in Opava; and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, at E.N.S.A.D. in Paris, and in Maastricht. She has had over 130 group and 30 solo exhibitions and has published several books.