Katarina Janeckova No War is Acceptable!!!, 2023, edition of 50

“Dearest friends of mine, and all humans with hearts. We all have traumas and fears we carry, and some are more painful than others. Only love, forgiveness, acceptance and understanding can erase those, and heal our world from within. Wars have been here for ages. All they do is gain profit at the expense of others, at the expense of children. Wars never helped to solve anything. Systematic support, freedom, education, human rights, deep friendships and open conversations on the other hand are the most important tools for a change. Thank you everyone for your kindness, and thank you Her Clique for always caring,” - Katarina Janečková.

Katarina Janečková works across media, employing paper, canvas, bedsheets and a wide array of markmaking tools to skewer received notions of authentic culture, gender norms, sexual expression, national pride, social progress, and age-appropriate behaviors. Her process is free-ranging, improvisational and fearless, and she uses her own sexuality, motherhood, and identity as a painter as characters in the scenes she envisions. Her critical attention and transgressive methodologies have most recently been trained on the fallacies of contemporary American life, a happy outgrowth of time spent in Texas, even as her relentless commitment to social justice and the transformative and cathartic potential for figurative painting remains free of geographical site or national character. Most recently, her pictures have been populated by women whose gendered, bountiful “mothering” has been pushed to absurd ends, whose bodies have become amalgamations of hypersexualized “cut-outs,” and whose foils are most frequently an army of randy, proud, endearing and occasionally foolhardy bears.