Radost-spolek pro okrasu Suchdola a zábavy společenské

V pátek 10.10. jsme měli modrotiskový workshop Suchdolská vesta. Tu svou si přišel natisknout i autor návrhu z prvního obrázku a držel se ho:mapa bude! A nejen on se držel svého stylu… tak přesně spočítaný motiv jsme tu ještě neměli. Snad nebudou kluci ve svých modrobílých vestách dělat na Suchdole neplechu.

🪢 Mothers without Hands: Procession 🪢
An international performance by artist Tereza Bušková
🔸11th May 2025 at 15:00
🔸Brandejsův dvůr, Dvorská 1/3, 165 00 Praha-Suchdol

Multidisciplinary artist, TEREZA BUŠKOVÁ (b.1978, Prague) lives and works in Birmingham. Following a BA in Fine Art Bušková completed an MA in Fine Art Printmaking at the Royal College of Art in 2007. Bušková’s practice deals with ritual, tradition and craft, celebrating and reinterpreting Slavic as well as European customs through the media of print, performance and video.

Tereza Bušková incorporates various often hard-to-reach communities into her intuitive and visionary practice, which is rooted in thorough anthropological research. She engages them through traditional craft and baking workshops inspired by Slavonic folklore. While these traditions form the starting point of her work, Bušková also connects them with elements of British and other European cultures, resulting in performances, films, and images that transcend geographical boundaries and function as mythic narratives that defy temporal classification.

Among Tereza Bušková’s previous community-based projects is The Clipping the Church (2016), which focused on reviving the nearly forgotten English tradition of symbolically “embracing” a church. In June 2016, just 13 days before the Brexit referendum, more than 200 people gathered at St Barnabas Church in Erdington, Birmingham. The performance combined Czech wedding customs with English rituals, creating a powerful symbol of unity within a diverse community.

Among Tereza Bušková’s more recent participatory projects funded by the Arts Council are Hidden Mothers (2021) and Little Queens (2022), both of which explore motherhood in connection with ritual, identity, and community. Hidden Mothers celebrated the often invisible migrant and refugee mothers, while Little Queens, inspired by a traditional Moravian ritual, focused on intergenerational celebration of women and was part of the cultural programme leading up to the Commonwealth Games. Bušková recently exhibited her video Clipping the Church (2016) at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, as part of the Friends in Love and War exhibition in collaboration with the British Council.

Text by Dr Nicola Baird
Direction: Tereza Bušková .buskova
Curator: Dr Nicola Baird
Graphic Design: James Ward / Jiri Busek .busek

More information at https://motherswithouthands.wordpress.com

Photocredits:
Slide 1: Tereza Bušková holding Mothers Insignia, London, 2021, Photo Katarzyna Perlak
Slide 3: Mothers without Hands, Procession, Folkestone, 2025, Photo Carl Gibbons
Slide 5: Clipping the Church, Procession, Birmingham, 2016, Photo Gwynne Gibbons
Slide 7: Hidden Hands of Walsall, Procession, Walsall, 2024, Photo Dee Patel
Slide 8: Ritual of Homecoming, Hidden Mothers, Copeland Gallery, London, 2021, Photo Carl Gibbons

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🪢 Mothers without Hands: Procession 🪢
An international performance by artist Tereza Bušková
🔸11th May 2025 at 15:00
🔸Brandejsův dvůr, Dvorská 1/3, 165 00 Praha-Suchdol

Bušková’s own deeply personal experience of sexual assault as a teenager and of a subsequently emotionally manipulative marriage inform both her thinking and her work. In the artist’s own words: ‘I would like to empower women who have experienced or are experiencing sexual and domestic violence, this kind of abuse and the invisibility and stigma attached are things that need to be talked about more. My aim with Mothers Without Hands is to offer support and a form of protection through collective making and sharing’.

Mothers Without Hands takes its title from ‘The Girl Without Hands’, a fairy tale collected and revised by the Brothers Grimm, though more than a thousand variants are known to have been recorded globally. Despite its 1200-year-old history and comprehensive cross-cultural circulation, this ancient folk tale remains largely unknown. ‘The Girl Without Hands’, featuring a heroine whose hands are cut off and later magically restored, is a story not only about patriarchal oppression, persecution, violation and trauma, but also about survival, strength and healing.

Mothers Without Hands is inspired by and seeks to reinterpret an ancient Czech custom known as Ježíškovy matičky (Beloved Mothers of Christ) traditionally coinciding with and celebrative of Easter. A religious as well as a pagan ceremony traditionally led by two ‘Madonnas’ who carry a sculpture of Christ on the Cross, Beloved Mothers of Christ celebrates the abundance of new life that comes with Spring.

It is also said, in years gone by, the custom has been employed both as a form of protest and a means of protection by local women who had been r***d by the men they worked for and their apprentices in nearby villages. Dating back to the 17th century, this uniquely Moravian ritual was actively practiced up until the Second World War before being banned by the N***s – who viewed it as a form of tacit political protest – and subsequently suppressed by the atheist authorities of Communist Czechoslovakia. Beloved Mothers of Christ owes its survival and revival in recent years to the residents of several villages near the town of Olomouc where the custom historically originated.

More information at https://motherswithouthands.wordpress.com

Direction: Tereza Bušková .buskova
Curator: Nicola Baird
Text written by Nicola Baird
Graphic Design: James Ward / Jiri Busek .busek

Photocredits:
Slide 1: Tereza Bušková, Photograph, 'Crown of Darkness', Wedding Rituals Series, Royal College of Art London, 2007
Slide 3: Philipp Grot Johann (1841–1892), illustration for the Brothers Grimm fairy tale "The Girl Without Hands". Source: ru-book-illustr.livejournal.com
Slide 5: Hidden Mothers, Ritual of Homecoming, Performance, Copeland Gallery, Peckham, London, 2021, Photo by Katarzyna Perlak
Slide 7: Procession of two Madonnas from Lašťany, Olomouc region, Czech Republic, Photo by Jana Kloučková Kudrnová
Slide 9: Procession of two Madonnas from Lašťany, Olomouc region, Czech Republic, Photo by Jana Kloučková Kudrnová

🪢

🔸Mothers without Hands: Procession 🔸

An international performance by artist Tereza Bušková
11th May 2025 at 15:00
Brandejsův dvůr, Dvorská 1/3, 165 00 Praha-Suchdol

🪢FEATURING:
Zoe Simon, performance
Eliška Salay Kašparová, performance
Daniela Voráčková, performance
Karolina Wegrzyn, singing
Bela Emerson, cello
Women choir Ťuhaja
Mariana Novotná, costumes
Members of Radost Suchdol and local residents

Join Czech-born artist Tereza Bušková and her creative team in a ceremonial procession through the streets of Suchdol, Prague in celebration of Mothers’ Day.
The result of collective craft and baking workshops for women living in Brno and Prague, this is the second in a series of four protective, participatory processions taking place in the UK and the Czech Republic as part of Mothers without Hands, a multidisciplinary and folklore-inspired community art project established to raise awareness of violence against women and girls.

Ceremonial garments, along with the collectively made crowns and hand-held totems to be worn and carried as part of the procession, represent the reality that women carry women.

Bušková’s reinterpretation of Beloved Mothers of Christ will see the Christ figure featured in the original ritual replaced by a Matka (Mother), an intricately braided figure made from leaven dough symbolising womanhood, motherhood and sisterhood. The Matka will be carried by two ‘Mothers’ who will wear folk-inspired costumes envisioned by Bušková in collaboration with Mariana Novotná and the women's collective Radost Suchdol. Made by women for women, each costume will be personalised and enriched with symbols of their maker’s identity.

Representation of this reality that women carry women – along with the exchange of stitches, symbols and stories across geographical borders and over time – that is so central to Mothers without Hands’s inherent and emotive power.

The focuses throughout on the universally resonant subject of violence against women and the importance of supportive, diverse and integrated communities as well as on the timely celebration and preservation of nature – given the global climate emergency we now collectively face – make Mothers without Hands a compelling project of care and compassion.

More information at https://motherswithouthands.wordpress.com

Direction: Tereza Bušková .buskova
Curator: Nicola Baird
Graphic Design: James Ward / Jiri Busek .busek

Photocredits:
Slide 1: Beloved Mothers of Christ, Ježíškovy Matičky, 2023, Bělkovice-Lašťany, Czech Republic, Photo by Jana Kloučková Kudrnová
Slide 3: Photo by Carl Gibbons
Slide 5: Photo by Carl Gibbons
Slide 8: Photo by Tereza Bušková

🪢

🪢 Mothers without Hands 🪢

Procession and international performance by Tereza Bušková
🔸11th of May 2025 at 15:00 in Prague’s Suchdol

“Women across Czech Republic and the British Isles come together to share stories of violence, abuse and rebirth through performance and poignant art inspired by their folklores and cultures.”

Taking its title from ‘The Girl Without Hands’, a fairy tale collected by the Grimm Brothers not only about patriarchal oppression, persecution, violation and trauma, but also about survival, strength and healing, Mothers Without Hands is inspired by an ancient Czech custom known as Ježíškovy matičky. A Christian as well as a pagan ceremony traditionally led by two ‘Madonnas’ who carry a sculpture of Christ on the cross, it is also said to have been employed both as a form of protest and a means of protection by local women who had been r***d by the men they worked for and their apprentices in nearby villages.

“I would like to empower women who have experienced or are experiencing sexual and domestic violence, this kind of abuse and the invisibility and stigma attached are things that need to be talked about more. My aim with Mothers Without Hands is to offer support and a form of protection through collective making and sharing.” Tereza Bušková

Direction: Tereza Bušková .buskova
Curator: Nicola Baird
Graphic Design: James Ward / Jiri Busek .busek

Partners & Supporters


More information at https://motherswithouthands.wordpress.com

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Photocredits
Slide 3: Mothers without Hands, In Collaboration with Take Up Space Festival, Folkestone, 2024 Photo by .photography

Slide 5: Beloved Mothers of Christ / Jeziskovy Maticky, 2023, Photo by

Slide 7: Hidden Hands of Walsall, Walsall, 2024, Photo by

Slide 9: Mothers without Hands, In Collaboration with Take Up Space Festival, Folkestone, 2025 Photo by