Oskár Čepan

Lucia Nimcová (1977, Humenné) studied photography at the Silesian University in Opava, Czechia, and at the Rijks akademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, Netherlands. She is a photographer and a conceptual artist with an interest in the complicated and sometimes absurd world of social and cultural relations in the countries of Eastern Europe. Her outputs include books, prints, videos, installations, and performances. She investigates the tension between the official/public and private spheres of life, and the manners in which the two domains overlap or contradict each other. A great deal of her attention has been focused on the turbulent history of the Rusyn ethnic minority to which she herself traces her roots. She also dealt with the issue of female experience in the post-socialist countries and the discrepancy between desire and reality as experienced by the women in the said region. She authored a book of photographs dedicated to (urban) animals wherein she ponders the ways in which we perceive different species and the question why we feel superior to them (Animal Imago, 2013). In the years 2014 and 2015, she and a fellow artist Sholt Dobie traveled across Ukraine, building an archive of photographs, videos, and sound recordings which they in turn used to create an opera, on the borderline between an ethnographic documentary and musical theater (Khroniky / Experimental Folk Opera). Lucia Nimcová is a nomad who spends more time abroad (currently in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) than in Slovakia. She won the Oskár Čepan Award in 2007, the finalists’ exhibition took place in the Medium Gallery and featured also Erik Binder, Patrik Illo, and Filip Jurkovič.