Photographic book created within my solo exhibition "The Secret Lives of Birds"
Jedna Dva Tři Gallery, Prague
24th April 2025—25th May 2025
***The exhibition was supported by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA)***
Curator : Edita Malina
"The Secret Lives of Birds borrows its title from a 2024 ambient album by Patricia Wolf, which explores invisible layers of presence and perception through soundscapes and bird recordings. Just as the musician listens to the sounds of the city from the perspective of its animal inhabitants, this exhibition invites us to slow down – to notice what usually escapes ordinary attention.
Julie Hrčířová’s photographs deliberately avoid any narrative reference points and instead focus on the relationship between object, space, and viewer. They do not lead us through a story or interpretation. Instead, they place us in situations where vision is unstable, slowed, blurred. What remains is a shadow, a fold, a surface.
The city is not just an environment. It is a body – breathing, wounded, renewing itself. It is present both as a restless backdrop and as an active agent – layered, changeable, indifferent, yet involved.
The exhibition’s central series, Fragments of the City, inspired by the urbanist Colin McFarlane’s book of the same name, consists of large-format photographs and darkroom works – luminograms and photograms – in which the artist experiments with found materials, light, and time. In doing so, she blurs the boundaries between documentary and abstraction, between the seen and the hidden.
It is as if we glimpse the city through the eyes of its most familiar – and at the same time most overlooked – inhabitant. Fragments without direction, movements without logic. A pigeon does not read the city or follow it like a map. It perceives its currents, its empty spaces, the warmth from windows, the imprint of people. It is always there. Watching us. Returning our gaze.
Once celebrated messengers, war heroes, companions, and masters of navigation – now often ignored and unwanted. And yet, perhaps more than anyone, they deserve a place on a pedestal – for their quiet, enduring contribution to society. These are not wild birds, but no longer fully domesticated either – beings who have accompanied us through history.
In The Secret Lives of Birds, pigeons are agents of action, inhabitants of cities, often taken for granted. They are protagonists. Witnesses. Mirrors.
The exhibition leads us into silence, into slowness, into sensitivity. Into perceiving what remains hidden, what is not meant for instant understanding. What escapes direct view may, in fact, be the most important.
We are invited to perceive the city not as a system, but as a living organism – not linearly, but in layers. Fragmentarily, unexpectedly. As a process of spatial renewal, not directed from the outside, but born from within. It is a shifting field of perception of which we are a part."
Photographic book created within my solo exhibition "The Secret Lives of Birds"
Jedna Dva Tři Gallery, Prague
24th April 2025—25th May 2025
***The exhibition was supported by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA)***
Curator : Edita Malina
"The Secret Lives of Birds borrows its title from a 2024 ambient album by Patricia Wolf, which explores invisible layers of presence and perception through soundscapes and bird recordings. Just as the musician listens to the sounds of the city from the perspective of its animal inhabitants, this exhibition invites us to slow down – to notice what usually escapes ordinary attention.
Julie Hrčířová’s photographs deliberately avoid any narrative reference points and instead focus on the relationship between object, space, and viewer. They do not lead us through a story or interpretation. Instead, they place us in situations where vision is unstable, slowed, blurred. What remains is a shadow, a fold, a surface.
The city is not just an environment. It is a body – breathing, wounded, renewing itself. It is present both as a restless backdrop and as an active agent – layered, changeable, indifferent, yet involved.
The exhibition’s central series, Fragments of the City, inspired by the urbanist Colin McFarlane’s book of the same name, consists of large-format photographs and darkroom works – luminograms and photograms – in which the artist experiments with found materials, light, and time. In doing so, she blurs the boundaries between documentary and abstraction, between the seen and the hidden.
It is as if we glimpse the city through the eyes of its most familiar – and at the same time most overlooked – inhabitant. Fragments without direction, movements without logic. A pigeon does not read the city or follow it like a map. It perceives its currents, its empty spaces, the warmth from windows, the imprint of people. It is always there. Watching us. Returning our gaze.
Once celebrated messengers, war heroes, companions, and masters of navigation – now often ignored and unwanted. And yet, perhaps more than anyone, they deserve a place on a pedestal – for their quiet, enduring contribution to society. These are not wild birds, but no longer fully domesticated either – beings who have accompanied us through history.
In The Secret Lives of Birds, pigeons are agents of action, inhabitants of cities, often taken for granted. They are protagonists. Witnesses. Mirrors.
The exhibition leads us into silence, into slowness, into sensitivity. Into perceiving what remains hidden, what is not meant for instant understanding. What escapes direct view may, in fact, be the most important.
We are invited to perceive the city not as a system, but as a living organism – not linearly, but in layers. Fragmentarily, unexpectedly. As a process of spatial renewal, not directed from the outside, but born from within. It is a shifting field of perception of which we are a part."