Reports from Oikos: Alma, Diamon, Melogs and Gulmas

Welcome to Florendom. Florendom is a house that breathes and purrs. Branches grow through it, and together with its inhabitants, they keep the house running.

It is home to giants, bald mermaids, shape-shifters, crows with anthracite cloaks, dearest Alvo, inseparable twins, Erlenah, who locks the door with a chain, Zdiva, who knows all kinds of medicinal plants, Pragma, with her problems well hidden under the carpet, Tarván with two fish tails, but also Diamon, a monster who takes on the form of our worst anxieties and fears. Stina, the author of this exhibition and book, also lives there.

Florendom is a space where family members are given mythical names and where their abilities and daily rituals are celebrated. Florendom is an interspace where it is possible to dream and truly feel, and where those who are no longer here can be with us. Florendom is both a refuge and an island of resistance. This is manifested, among other things, in the language spoken by its inhabitants, who use ingenious neologisms to define themselves against the normativity of language as a tool of exclusion and oppression.

But Oikos also resists through the values it professes and which govern its internal house rules: care, empathy, the importance of sharing and listening to the stories and experiences of others.

Curated by Eva Koťátková for Jelení Gallery at CSU in 2021. Photography by Michal Czanderle.