Born: 1975 Prague, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic)
Year of Migration to the UK: 1991
Biography
Multidisciplinary artist Tereza Stehlíková was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) on 24 April 1975. In April 1991, at the age of 15, she immigrated to London with her family, her father having been offered a job working as a tunnel engineer (he later worked on Transport for London's Jubilee underground line). She studied graphic design and illustration at Central Saint Martins (1995–98), followed by an MA in animation from the Royal College of Art (RCA) in 2001, and went on to teach drawing and workshops at the University of Westminster. In 2008 she returned to the RCA to undertake a PhD with her practice-basedresearch focusing on the tactile language of film. Since graduation in 2012, she has continued to engage in cross-disciplinary research, exploring how moving images can capture and communicate multi-sensory experiences and embodied memory. Stehlíková explains that her work has 'come out of my PhD research into haptic visuality, a concept developed by the academic Laura Marks, as well the films of Czech artist Jan Svankmajer, whose deep interest in tactility has found an expression in his films. Through my research as well as my association with Centre for the Study of the Senses, I have become aware of the role of all five senses in informing and influencing each other, concept known as crossmodal interactions. Although much of my research concerns multi-sensory, especially tactile impressions, it is the visual sense that has always been my key driving force of my work'.
Stehliková is a senior lecturer at the University of Westminster, an external examiner for Northumbria University and a research coordinator at the Royal College of Art, where she also supervises PhD students, and has organised a number of symposia including Animated Body in 2013 and Ecstatic Truth: Exploring the Essence of Animated Documentary in 2016. She is a founding member of Sensory Sites, an international collective generating collaborative exhibitions and research projects that explore sensory perception and bodily experience as well as the co-founder of Artesian, a journal for committed creativity, featuring the writings of John Berger and Don DeLillo, among others. She has presented her research at a number of conferences including The Courtauld Institute of Art (2014), Warwick University (2015), and UCL (2015), and her films have been screened at a variety of film and music festivals in the UK including the Whitechapel Art Gallery (2015, 2016) and the Open Senses Festival (2017).
The project Railtracks, a collaboration between writers John Berger and Anne Michaels, is a sensual and exploratory dialogue illustrated throughout by photographs taken by Stehliková and charting an atmospheric journey by train through the winter landscapes of Southern Bohemia. In addition, her short poetic film, Trieste: In Between States, was completed in collaboration with the writer Deborah Levy and screened at The Whitechapel Gallery in 2016, while a film project about the disappearance of Wormwood Scrubs is an ongoing work in progress with poet Steven J Fowler. Stehliková's practice also encompasses the development of a series of workshops with Dr Roberto Trotta, an astrophysicist at Imperial College London, focusing on using the senses to engender a more embodied understanding of abstract concepts, such as dark matter. She also continues to develop her long-term artist's film project, 4 Generations of Women, capturing the complex relationships between four generations of women in her own family. In 2019 Stehliková's work was included in an exhibition entitled Czech Routes to Britain at Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, celebrating the contribution of Czechoslovak artists to British visual culture since 1900. Stehliková lives in London with her partner and young family. In the UK her work is held in the British Council collection.
Related books
- Nicola Baird, ed., Czech Routes: Selected Czechoslovak Artists in Britain from the Ben Uri and Private Collections (London: Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, 2019)
- John Berger and Anne Michaels, Railtracks, illustrated by Tereza Stehlíková (London: Counterpoint, 2013)
- Generation (London: GV Gallery, 2013)
- Tereza Stehlíková, The Story of Violet (London: Go Together Press, 2007)
Public collections
Related organisations
- Central Saint Martins (student)
- London Animation School (student)
- Northumbria University (external examiner)
- Royal College of Art (student, research co-ordinator)
- Sensory Sites (founding member)
- University of Bedfordshire (lecturer)
- University of Westminster (senior lecturer)
Related web links
Selected exhibitions
- Disappearing Wormwood, Whitechapel Gallery (2020)
- Czech Routes: Selected Czechoslovak Artists in Britain from the Ben Uri and Private Collections, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2019)
- Four Generations of Women, Czech Embassy, London (2018)
- Thomas Bernhard, Austrian Cultural Institute (2018)
- Ophelia's Last Supper, Candid Arts Centre (2018)
- Sensory Sites, Somerset House (2018)
- Journey to the Interior, Dissenters Chapel, Kensal Green Cemetary (2017)
- Trieste: In Between States, Whitechapel Gallery (2016)
- The Perpetual, Filming Abstraction, Whitechapel Gallery (2015)
- Moving Water, October Gallery (2014)
- Icelandic Dining Exploration, Blacks Club, London (2013)
- Generation, GV Art Gallery (2012)
- Every Mother and Every Daughter, Kingsgate Gallery (2012)
- Just Under the Surface, The Crypt Gallery, St Pancras Church (2011)
- Safe to Touch, The Hub National Centre for Craft and Design (2005)
- Tactile Workshops, Royal College of Art (2005 ongoing)
