Edita Vološčuková

EDITA VOLOŠČUKOVÁ is an intermedia artist who has taught for many years as an assistant professor at the Department of Art Education at the Faculty of Art at the University of Prešov, where she works with various forms of contemporary visual art. In addition to her work with objects, she also explores the potential of prints, computer graphics and painting. She has exhibited her art both in Slovakia and further afield, and her work features in public and private collections at home and abroad. As a curator, she has prepared numerous international art projects and exhibitions, and she has served on several artistic juries and academic commissions. She has received many awards for her art: the Rector’s and Dean’s Award for Artistic Work (2003; 2004) from the University of Prešov, Slovakia; the President’s Award of the City of Nový Sacz, Salon (2003), in Poland; she is a laureate of the International Watercolour Triennial in Lučenec (1999; 2013), Slovakia, and a laureate of the 10th Biennial of Fine Arts (SVÚ, Bratislava; 2024). She is also a member of the C+S art collective.

Her work has long probed the relationship between science and art (in exhibitions such as Bolid, Modules, Laboratórium or Cosmic Design); “… she loves the natural sciences – physics, chemistry, biology, botany, genetics, astronomy… She is grateful that she lives in an era in which free creativity is encouraged, and she sees the unorthodox approaches of conceptual art as evidence of this”.[1] Science is as much a part of her work as nature, and she often connects the two in a form of mutual symbiosis. She has also addressed the topic of genetic modification and has also turned her attention to the visual parallels between computer motherboards and the human brain: “… I see the motherboard as an object with multiple semantic layers – it is akin to a palimpsest – it is reminiscent of maps of cities and landscapes, but also of the structure of the human brain, its neurons, tissue, synapses. A visual paraphrase of plant tissue, of the network of roots”. Layers of space and time, evocations of the vast quantities of information which flow through us.

The work titled TRANSMITTER (2025, from the Heterotopic Space series) posits mushrooms as forest antennae which live in symbiosis with other forms of plant life. They issue danger signals about threats to the forest – mycelia form underground networks with tree roots through which they transmit sound waves. Recent research into mycorrhizal fungal networks has identified up to fifty different groups of electrical signals which they produce (in essence, words). A forest internet. And then we have lichens, those incredible organisms so unlike anything else on Earth. The object titled MARRIAGE OF MINDS (2026, from the Heterotopic Space series) depicts the symbiotic relationship formed through the connection of fungi and algae. The two have existed together for millions and years and can no longer survive in isolation from each other. They represent a small parcel of life, a miniature ecosystem, “two entities which for some unknown reason decided that it was better to live together than to live alone. The perfect symbiosis ... a metaphor which humankind would be wise to bear in mind if we wish to survive into the future”.[2]

Throughout her work, Edita Vološčuková seeks out and finds the points at which art and science meet in a deep sense of resonance. Her artistic world is not a case of symbiosis in a biological understanding; instead, it operates on the level of metaphors of relationships, cooperation and mutual respect. At a time in which the world is crumbling apart, her art reminds us that survival often relies precisely on the capacity to make connections.

Edita Vološčuková, project curator

[1] Ridilla, J.: Edita Vološčuková: Umenie, veda, príroda
[2] https://is.muni.cz/el/1431/podzim2015/Bi5650/um/Ucenie_1.pdf