THE QUEER AND OTHER BEDS IN THE
RAINBOW GARDEN AND THE JOY OF UNSOLICITED GARDENING IN PUBLIC SPACE
ARTIST TALK BY BARBORA LUNGOVÁWEDNESDAY 17 JUNE, 5–6.30PM
IAN GULLAND LECTURE THEATRE, WHITEHEAD BUILDING, GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, SE14 6NW
In her artists‘ talk, the Czech artist Barbora Lungová will introduce her artistic research projects dedicated to gardening. Through creating her Rainbow Garden in Kyjov, Czech Republic, she has explored how irises and queerness can be wedded through deconstructing the cultural imagery associated with cultivar names in the context of landscape and biodiversity enhancement. In her other – solo or collaborative projects – she has been preoccupied by the thin line between traditional village-style „beautification“ of public space, its translation to urban context, and the questions of the spontaneity, joy, absurdity, and the sense (or the lack) of space as commons that guerilla gardening entails.
Barbora Lungová graduated at the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic in the field of Film Studies, English and American Studies (2002), and from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Brno University of Technology in the Studio of Figurative Painting (2006). She has recently completed her doctoral studies at the Academy of Fine Art in Bratislava, Slovakia. In the last two decades, she has been regularly exhibiting and curating exhibitions in Czech Republic and Slovakia. In 2025, she won the prestigious Jindřich Chalupecký Award, presenting her Rainbow Garden project in the award laureates‘ exhibition in the National Gallery Prague in 2025.
Image courtesy of Barbora Lungová.