Anna Hulačová’s “Bucolica,” currently on view at Kunstraum Dornbirn in Austria, contrasts ancient and modern practices related to the land, fine and folk art techniques, as well as abstract and representational imagery. Agriculture, rural life, and the development of industrialization play an important role in her work, as do live bees. A beekeeper in her native Czech Republic, Hulačová designs some of her concrete and wood forms to attract swarms of bees, inviting them to make their mark and build honeycombs. Infusing a pastoral sense of cooperation and collaboration into what might otherwise appear a bleak, apocalyptic vision of the future, her work offers a glimpse of adaptability and survival, restoring the spirit of nature to a disconnected world.
Robert Preece: On your Instagram account, you write that you “create poetic-surreal alternative worlds in which utopian hopes and dystopian threats interpenetrate.”
Anna Hulačová: In my work, I search for parallels between contrasts, which I then try to interconnect in sculptures. I strive to create a deliberate contrast-tension in each piece, for example, between natural and organic versus industrial, the old versus the new world, the social mood as utopian versus dystopian, the ancient versus the modern.
With this thematic and material tension, I metaphorically affirm the interconnectedness of everything seemingly contrasting. For me, it is a kind of struggle and, at the same time, a subconscious effort to establish a balance between all of these things. This exhibition is also, in a way, a continuation and elaboration of my approach to ongoing themes in my sculptural language, especially those related to the rural landscape and agriculture.
RP: Could you tell me about Underworld and Confiscation (2025) and its contrasts in form and symbolism?
AH: This sculpture has two meanings that merge into one, both conceptually and formally. The shapes and gestures of the figures harvesting grain are based on a detail from a relief on Trajan’s Column, where Roman peasant-soldiers harvest crops on small plots of confiscated land. At the same time, the morphology refers to the concrete monuments of Socialist Realism created in the Soviet era, which coincided with the collectivization of agriculture in Czechoslovakia. This meant the confiscation of property and fields belonging to small farmers for the purpose of land consolidation, which created large monocultural units. This fundamentally disrupted the natural structure of the countryside and landscape.
The relief of the figures gradually changes into a rock—a cave representing the ancient underworld—from which a symbolic pomegranate branch grows from a stylized Zetor tractor engine. The pomegranate branch, carved from a single piece of wood, was inhabited by bees, which built honeycombs in it. Similarly, the honeycombs fill the space between the wooden ribs of the boy reaching for the branch.
RP: What were you thinking about in the planning, making, and installation of Wheat Harvest (2025)?
AH: The stainless steel grain field is symbolically part of the material here, a continuation of the spilling silo into the landscape. For some viewers, the enlarged wheat may evoke genetically modified, enlarged ears. The motif of a woman leaning over a cornfield is inspired by Jean-François Millet’s The Gleaners. Women with bent backs have performed hard labor in the fields throughout history.
RP: Stainless steel silos surround the figures in Sowers (2025).
AH: For the basic architecture, I was inspired by Le Corbusier, who compared the simple forms of these functional buildings in the landscape to ancient temples. Silos are the dominant architecture of the countryside, and they become a central element in this space, like a base. The principle of functional architecture here transitions from the secular to the sacred.
I am fascinated by the utopian visions that accompanied the beginning of industrialization versus the dystopian controversy of these buildings, which are part of the industrial landscape associated with many of the agricultural sectors on which we depend and are connected to, despite their negative impact on the environment. The building extends into the landscape like a spilling mass in the form of sheet metal on the floor. The Sowers next to the building are inspired by historical scenes of people in the fields, sowing by hand. The three figures connected into a single whole may evoke a machine performing an old practice.
RP: What is the suspended UFO (2025) about?
AH: The flying object is inspired by a medieval fresco in the Visoki Dečani Monastery church in Kosovo. Here, I play with the social mood of the 1990s and the turn of the millennium, as well as my childhood memories shortly after the Velvet Revolution, and the conspiracy theory that crop circles were created by aliens. Instead of an alien, a simple tractor driver is depicted here. I remember how many households in the village bought conspiracy magazines in which crop circles were a regular topic. Detailed pictures of this fresco often appeared in these magazines as well.
RP: To Eternity (2024) depicts a severed cow head, with a honeycomb emerging from the neck.
AH: After this sculpture was created, it was inhabited by bees during swarming. The title is related to the ancient practice of bugonia, which was based on the belief that a bee colony is a spirit born in the body of a calf, ox, bull, or other cattle.
The concept of all the figurative sculptures with honeycombs is influenced by ancient beliefs inspired by the Greek legend of Aristaeus (god of farmers), which Virgil wrote about in his Georgics; the religious custom called bugonia was related to this story. I often use bugonia as the title for this type of sculpture, but I called this one To Eternity, which has the same meaning and describes the birth of a bee colony, like a spirit transforming through the body of an ox from the realm of the dead into this world. At a certain point in time, the bee acquired the meaning and name “born from the ox.” To Eternity is part of the architecture of the silo and symbolically adds to the impression of an ancient sacrificial shrine.
RP: How do you involve the bees in your process? Do they always cooperate?
AH: I have been working with bees in sculptures for more than 10 years. This practice is uncertain and unpredictable, because I always leave it up to the bees themselves to decide if the cavity in the sculpture is attractive to them and if they want to expand into it. This process is symbolic and inspired by ancient beliefs, beekeeping practices, and old Greco-Roman legends. The honeycombs built by the bees inside the sculptures are a kind of metaphorical substitute for important organs and entrails, or they may symbolize the materialized spirit of nature as the primary systematic structure inside the body of the sculpture. I also call it the spirit of ancient man in the body of modern man. Because the cavities serve as a space for the possible expansion of bees, the sculptures become a living part of the hives during the swarming season.
I keep bees in my garden, which makes it easier to access them with sculptures. Beekeeping is a lot of work and takes a lot of time, because as a beekeeper, you are responsible for the colony. This includes situations such as swarming, which sometimes visit our neighbors’ gardens, and they are not very happy about that.
RP: Why did you choose the title “Bucolica” for this show?
AH: After designing the architecture of the silo and the sculptures for it, I couldn’t avoid it. Bucolic describes a literary genre—pastoral poetry—that originated in ancient Greece and Rome. It represents a romanticized vision of the countryside and natural harmony with the landscape. In Virgil’s Bucolics, the main characters in the landscape are farmers or shepherds. Here, in the industrial landscape, people are somehow more connected to technology, but subconsciously they still have an ancient spirit within them and are still capable of performing ancient customs.
“Bucolica” not only means a romantic idea of the countryside, but according to Virgil, it also describes pain over the loss of land, which is a symbol of identity. This was mainly related to the confiscation of fields. Today, it is more of a dystopian feeling, a justified sadness over the loss of biodiversity, ecological collapse, and emerging environmental diseases.
“Bucolica” is on view at Kunstraum Dornbirn in Dornbirn, Austria, through March 1, 2026.
