Markéta Soukupová’s diploma thesis discusses the issue of work. The subject is personal for her; she solves it through practice and her own experience with various unqualified positions she has held over the past few years. Lately, she worked for a gardening company. It is quite an important and joyful activity, when the world flows under your hands and you soon literally reap the fruits of your effort in new, bright colors.

But, despite its rather significant as well as strenuous character, it is heavily undervalued, which attracted the artist’s attention and made her pursue the issue in her thesis. Many occupations beneficial to society are equally invisible and offer minimum pay. Markéta in her artistic practice works with descriptions, instructions and illustrations, trying to make her subject graspable for anyone. At the same time, the relation to manual work and the need to understand things are crucial to her. Her “mini-encyclopedias” convey a personal experience of the work to others. The simplicity of the activities is deliberately dissected into the smallest detail, and if she had more time, the brochures could perhaps easily have over a hundred pages.

The exhibited artifacts are often the result of cooperation – whether individual help or long-term efforts. Collaboration is important for the artist, since doing things alone or just for herself does not make sense to her.