ALBUMARTE presents
Lucia Tkáčová
Pain Chain
Solo exhibition
Curated by Lýdia Pribišová
4 December 2025 – 30 January 2026
OPENING
Thursday 4 December 2025, from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Free entry
OPENING HOURS: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm
AlbumArte, Via Flaminia 122, Rome
Exhibition realised with the support of public funds from the Slovak Art Council and the Slovak Institute in Rome, in collaboration with PILOT (Bratislava) and AlbumArte.
Returning to AlbumArte for the seventh time, Lýdia Pribišová curates this year the solo exhibition of Lucia Tkáčová, a Slovak artist known for her provocative, socially engaged and intensely evocative works – often born from collaborations with other artists – who here presents one of her rare solo exhibition projects: Pain Chain. The exhibition, winner of the 2025 Slovak Art Council Award, will be open until 30 January 2026 (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm).
The exhibition stands as a powerful and courageous testimony, rooted in the artist’s autobiographical dimension, having grown up in a dysfunctional family marked by alcoholism. Through this work, Tkáčová confronts the consequences of such an experience, exploring in particular the condition of emotional codependency, a psychological and relational state in which a person’s sense of identity, self-esteem and emotional wellbeing become tightly bound to another individual, often affected by addiction or emotional instability. Family members of individuals with addictions, as in the artist’s case, tend indeed to set aside their own needs to support the other, ultimately suppressing their authenticity and sense of self.
With Pain Chain, Tkáčová gives shape to a narrative of pain and resistance that strikes universal chords. The installation, intense and uncompromising, addresses themes still shrouded in social taboos, bringing to light shared yet seldom expressed experiences. The work draws inspiration from family constellations, a form of systemic drama therapy aimed at exploring and making visible the unconscious dynamics within family or relational systems. The artist creates from this a visual and performative device that becomes at once confession and act of healing, an exercise in reconciling with one’s own history.
With brutal honesty and formal sensitivity, Pain Chain invites a direct confrontation with pain, without embellishment or escape routes. Within this radical gesture, an art-therapeutic dimension emerges, in which creation becomes a space of awareness and transformation.
Lucia Tkáčová’s practice spans multiple media and languages: from text to video, from objects to tapestries, to immersive environments and monumental sculptures in public space. Her work often arises from collaborative processes, built through dialogue and exchange with other bodies and minds. After years of critically and politically engaged research, the artist has shifted her focus towards the therapeutic potential of art, exploring ways in which it can act as a palliative force in a wounded world.
Her gaze now shifts: from imagining change to producing transformation, from resistance to profound adaptation, from solutions to solace. Pain Chain thus marks a new stage in Tkáčová’s path, where artistic language becomes a tool for care, testimony and liberation.
Biographical notes
Lucia Tkáčová was born in 1977 in Banská Štiavnica (Slovakia) and lives and works in Bratislava and Prague. Her works, both solo and collaborative, have been exhibited, among others, at: Art in General (New York); 54th Venice Biennale (Venice); KINDL (Berlin); House of Arts (Brno); Lentos Art Museum (Linz); Migros Museum (Zurich); MNAC (Bucharest); mumok (Vienna); Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (Berlin); Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt); Taipei Fine Arts Museum (Taipei); TBA21 (Vienna); Whitechapel Gallery (London).
With the support of public funds from
In collaboration with
