year: 2022
place: Entrance gallery
curator: Veronika Čechová
The Secret Garden was the first group exhibition in Entrance Gallery’s new space in Prague, following its relocation from the orangery of the Břevnov Monastery due to rising rent. Works by three women artists and one additional artist explored the paradoxical meanings of the garden — inspired by Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 novel, where the garden becomes a site of transformation, care, and renewal.
A site-specific intervention by architect and artist Savka Marenić transformed the former storage rooms into a new gallery environment. Based on the audio fairytale Mystery of Ms. Warden, the installation follows a character forced to leave her shop after a rent increase and to temporarily inhabit the gallery’s overhead storage spaces. The audio narrative unfolds within a green room hidden in the ceiling, while sewn plants and scattered seeds extend fragments of her new life throughout the exhibition, gradually turning the gallery into a fictional garden.
photos ©Martin Bražina