Then she recalls that curious remark at the end of their dinner at the restaurant. He told her that he might have been mistaken about her identity. That she might be someone else! “I follow you around like a spy,” he wrote her in the first letter. So he’s the spy. He scrutinizes her, he does experiments on her to prove that she’s not what he thought she was! He writes her letters under the name of some unknown person and then watches her behavior...

There was nothing to see through the window now, the train was in the tunnel, and she felt herself drawing far away from her sister-in-law, from Jean-Marc, from scrutiny, from espionage, drawing away from her life, from her life that stuck so to her, that weighed on her; the words “lost to sight” suddenly came to mind, and she was surprised to find that the journey toward disappearance was not gloomy, that under the aegis of her mythological rose, it was gentle and joyful.
“We’re going deeper and deeper,” said the lady, anxiously.
“To where truth resides,” said Chantal.
“To where,” added Leroy, “resides the answer to your question: why are we living? What is essential in life?”

Milan Kundera – Identity, 1997
(Translated from the French by Linda Asher, HarperFlamingo, 1998.)

The international group exhibition Ident at the Ústí nad Labem House of Arts launches a series of exhibition projects from 2024 to 2027 that will focus on critical topics reflecting the unique challenges of the Ústí Region. These issues include identity formation in the context of historical and current developments, focusing on building a critical and open community, community cooperation, and alternative education as active tools to combat aspects of social exclusion. Additionally, the projects will examine landscape development in relation to local postindustrial and global environmental processes. Finally, they will explore the tradition of local crafts and the search for new technological perspectives as ways to strengthen sustainable development and quality of life.

The traditional understanding of both individual and shared identity is generally rooted in a historical and socio-cultural foundation. This foundation is established within the intimate family setting, as well as within the specific community and the environment shaped by that community. The Ústí Region has, under the influence of various factors, external circumstances, and historical processes, lost this collective identity built over centuries. In addition to the near-complete transformation of the local population caused by wartime and post-war mass deportations of Czechs, Jewish people, and later Germans, the primary cause of this loss was extensive industrial exploitation and the related destruction of historical settlements and the cultural landscape.

Its current residents, who represent the fourth generation settled in the region after its repopulation, recognize this disruption of their local identity. They are seeking ways to bridge this gap and form local connections that will strengthen the identity and autonomy of their communities. This search comes at a time when new definitions of identity are emerging globally, particularly those related to gender, environmental concerns, political or ideological beliefs, and virtual self-projection and representation in online spaces. The gradually built-up socio-cultural identity of this region and its inhabitants is being expanded by a range of topics emphasizing the role of social networks, online platforms, and virtual projections.

The exhibition Ident is a contribution to the efforts to strengthen self-awareness on both the individual and collective levels. It showcases a variety of artistic approaches to the theme of identity, drawing on the creative and social interests of the featured artists. The exhibition also examines how this issue manifests in the diverse yet overlapping realities of the global world.