Wanko: “…We’ve Always Been From Brno…”

The exhibition is rooted in the personal experience of artist Andrea Wanko, who chose to confront her family history connected to Czech–German origins, Nazism, and the post-war events in Brno. A topic long associated in her family with silence and fear becomes the beginning of a journey toward understanding herself as well as the broader historical context.

The evening will combine the exhibition opening with a discussion and screenings of excerpts from a forthcoming documentary being developed as part of this year-long project. Together with Andrea Wanko and therapist Šárka Weberová, we will speak about family trauma and what the awareness of “guilt in our roots” does to us. The discussion will be moderated by Veronika Smyslová, and the exhibition’s curator Markéta Brhlíková will also join the conversation, offering insight into how such a process can be translated into visual language while remaining human, concrete, and communicable.

To what extent are our personalities and inner lives shaped by the experiences of our ancestors? Andrea decides to stop being afraid and, for the first time, to actively enter the complex story of her family. Through therapy, spiritual accompaniment, artistic practice, archival research, conversations with witnesses, and returns to sites of memory, she gradually explores how unresolved history shapes identity, relationships, and everyday experience. The project opens the Czech–German theme through a specific human story, making room for the complexity of the past without simplification or moral labelling.

The exhibition will be on view until 30 June 2026 at Moravské náměstí (Moravian Square).