by Adela Lovric // Sept. 4, 2026
As the conditions of life become increasingly precarious, the idea of necessity is continually negotiated and fought for. The fourth Biennale Matter of Art, ‘Necessary Wishes,’ proposes its titular concept as a form of practice—a demand, speculation, prayer or refusal through which other possibilities might be rehearsed. Instead of treating art as an autonomous object that reflects political conditions from a safe distance, the biennial foregrounds practices embedded in the social, material and institutional structures they seek to transform. Its curators—Jaroslava Tomanová, Jakub Gawkowski and František Fekete—propose artistic form as “a vehicle for solidarity and compassion, functioning as a carrier, proxy and instrument for strengthening insurgent communities as much as addressing personal urgency.”
Biennale Matter of Art 2026, exhibition view, National Gallery Prague // © Jonáš Verešpej
Tomanová frames many of these practices through Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s notion of the undercommons: informal spaces of collective knowledge, solidarity and resistance that operate within and against institutions. In this sense, one of the biennale’s most interesting propositions is that, beyond simply imagining alternatives, art can organize the conditions in which alternatives become possible. Inspired by artistic and organizational strategies of the Indonesian collective ruangrupa, several Prague-based collectives—FId, StonyTellers, kroužek intersekce and Shella Radio—were invited to contribute to the program, embodying the fugitive position. Their participation suggests a necessity in sustaining relationships, creating commons and making space for forms of life that institutions cannot easily contain.
kroužek intersekce, Biennale Matter of Art 2026 at National Gallery Prague // © Jonáš Verešpej
kroužek intersekce, for example, creates a space for experimenting with radical forms of study and commons-making at the heart of the biennale’s central venue, the National Gallery Prague. Throughout the exhibition period, the collective invites independent cultural initiatives to organize events within a tent-like structure that also serves as a resting point midway through the vast display of artworks. In doing so, it builds a network of collaborators and allies in real time while opening the institution through gestures of generosity and trust. The structure becomes more than a functional space: it introduces a different social rhythm into the gallery, creating a productive friction with the institution’s conventional modes of circulation, spectatorship and control.
Leila Basma & Zaher Jureidini, Biennale Matter of Art 2026 at National Gallery Prague // © Jonáš Verešpej
Zaher Jureidini and Leila Basma, who are active in a Prague community of mostly migrants from the SWANA region and their local allies, participate in the exhibition with a newly commissioned video installation. Combining personal portraits, home videos and reflections on belonging and becoming far from home, their work explores the adversities migrants face alongside the networks of allyship and community they build in their new surroundings. It is also one of the few positions in the biennale that foreground Palestinian perspectives, alongside Noor Abed’s new video commission and Huda Takriti’s series of lens-based works. This curatorial choice reads as a proclamation of “never again” in the face of ongoing genocide, colonization and displacement, while affirming the art institution as a space where such demands can and should be articulated—especially while the local government continues to support the perpetrators.
Jürgen Baldiga, Biennale Matter of Art 2026 at National Gallery Prague // © Jonáš Verešpej
Throughout the exhibition at the National Gallery Prague, art is explored as an affirmation of identity, a survival strategy and a way of bearing witness. A significant portion consists of works addressing queer life and identity, including those by Jürgen Baldiga, Yana Bachynska aka Jan Bačynsjkyj and Adrián Kriška. Baldiga lived in Berlin from 1979 to 1994, moving through queer and artistic circles. After being diagnosed with HIV, he turned to documentary photography, offering a view into West German society and its margins. The selection from his archive, now held by Berlin’s Schwules Museum, brings together self-portraits and images of his community. For Baldiga, photography was a means of shaping gay identity and confronting the stigma surrounding AIDS. Photographs by his friend Aron Neubert, made at Baldiga’s request during his final years, extend this project into the experience of illness. Together, the two bodies of work show how art can transform a changing body into testimony, while preserving the memory of a community in crisis.
Yana Bachynska _ Jan Bačynsjkyj, Biennale Matter of Art 2026 at National Gallery Prague // © Jonáš Verešpe
While Baldiga’s work brings a historic perspective, Bachynska/Bačynsjkyj and Kriška represent a new generation of defiant queer voices. For his ready-made sculptures, Bachynska/Bačynsjkyj stitches together clothing and found objects—fabrics, furs, feathers, broken toys and beads—creating doll-like characters shaped by conditions of scarcity. These patch-worked figures, crafted with a keen eye for humor and drama and embodying identities that resist fixity, are paired with short, diaristic reflections by the queer Ukrainian artist on his life as a nomad navigating war and migration.
Kriška’s biennale commission, ‘Where Even the Ravens Daren’t Go,’ brings together queer culture, DIY practice and social activism into a sculptural installation that subverts the image of a traditional rural life. Kriška and his partner left Prague for a remote part of Fuerteventura, where they’re restoring a derelict farmhouse into a cultural center, complete with a garden intended for artist residencies. Inspired in part by Derek Jarman’s ‘Prospect Cottage,’ the installation imagines the garden as a queer micro-utopia: a space where DIY, gardening and collective life become forms of rejecting rigid societal expectations while making room for radical dreams.
Adrián Kriška at Biennale Matter of Art 2026 at National Gallery Prague // © Jonáš Verešpej
The exhibition’s unifying visual element is the architectural design by RUINA office. Drawing on the aesthetics and structural logic of construction sites and scaffolding, it foregrounds adaptability and resourcefulness, while its emphasis on recycling and sustainable materials translates the exhibition’s politics of necessity into its physical infrastructure. Beyond the National Gallery Prague, the biennial extends to GAMPA – City Gallery Pardubice, an hour’s drive from Prague, as well as the Tusculum Prague art center, where long-term community-oriented activities continue past the biennale’s three-month duration.
Exhibition Info
Biennale Matter of Art
Group Show: ‘Necessary Wishes’
Exhibition: June 12–Sept. 13, 2026
matterof.art
National Gallery Prague – Trade Fair Palace, Dukelských Hrdinů 530/47, 170 00 Prague, Czechia click here for map
GAMPA, Automatické mlýny, Pardubice I 1962, 530 03 Pardubice, Czechia, click here for map
Tusculum Prague, Chittussiho 144, 160 00 Prague, Czechia, click here for map
