Ethnic and cultural contexts of design

Ethnic and cultural contexts of design

Hana Dvořáková

The current designers‘ work in the Czech Republic has been increasingly drawing inspiration from the elements of the Czech and Moravian traditional culture. In other words, views that one should look into one’s own courtyard rather than the neighbour’s are now „in“.

The exhibition run jointly by the Ethnographical Institute of the Moravian Museum in Brno and Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín entitled “The Future of the Tradition” (curators: Hana Dvořáková, Kristýna Petříčková; 23 June – 31 December 2015) displays the students‘ and their tutors‘ current work. The scale of work is quite broad: it alternates between folk costume reconstructions, based on the firm support of research, and present design trends, as observed in students’ works. The traditional ornamentation, material or technique is not something given and unchangeable. Blunt objects inspire questions, carrying a message of natural, elementary simplicity made special by the touches of Moravian rural culture – all this executed in the present- day visual art expression.

The displayed students’ works correspond with the philosophy of the Zlín Faculty emphasizing the inspirational traditional background as one of the ways how to remain unique and special at the time of globalisation.

ÚĽUV