2014 'The New New World' at 'Layers of Response' exhibition (collaboration with Tony Cran), NARS gallery, New York

The art of divination, reading signs and symbols in the hope of catching a glimpse of what may come is the central concept embedded within this installation.

This project has been developed during Mariana & Tony's residency at NARS. New York was chosen for this project because it is in many ways the crowning jewel of Western Civilisation. Within it's facets can be seen reflections of our present and the distopian / utopian dichotomy which lies at the heart of creating possible futures for our civilisation.

A Moon lander module model is constructed of debris and cheap materials to simultaneously reflect the accomplishments and ideals of our society and the price paid for letting those ideals slip into aggressive and asymmetrical development. This model is symbolically a shelter, a monument to idealism and an attempted talisman to ignite reflection within the viewer. Within the lander itself, visible through a deep gash in its side, a projection screen is showing twin stories of divination -  a tarot reader doing a reading on the short term undercurrents of American political climate and an astrologer talking about the long term future of New York City itself.

(Artist Statement, Mariana Jandova + Tony Cran, 2014)

2014 'The Voyage Home' at 'What Follows Came Before' exhibition, Seventh gallery, Melbourne (curated by Amelia Winata)

The Voyage Home is a reflection on a search for home, a search coloured by unique individual perceptions of those who embark on this journey. Two people undergo a process of translocation from one country to another together. Yet, without even realising it, they create their own narratives within the experiences they shared, each having a completely different perspective and understanding of what was going on at that time. 

It is a deeply personal search as well as physical relocation from one space to another. It is a search that is at once shared and solitary. 

Three videos are projected large onto the walls of the gallery. First reveals the artist's father sharing a story about his escape from communist Czechoslovakia to Australia, and his life and relationships throughout this process. The second shows his ex-wife sharing that same story told from her perspective. The final projection is a shifting image - Australian and Czech landscape, slowly merging into each other. In front of this projection stands a fragile ladder built of balsa wood, connecting the ceiling to the floor with highly reflective black perspex at each end of the ladder. A symbolic journey is evoked as viewer gazes into the dark perspex and sees the ladder continuing onwards and disappearing into black void, a journey that never ends, the climb for the ultimate happiness that cannot be found. 

(Artist Statement, Mariana Jandova, 2014)

2013 'Revolution Over' Exhibition at Blindside, Melbourne

Reassessment of culture leads to the innovation of culture.

Revolution-over is a work consisting of three unique insights into the lives of the family affected at first by the second world war, then the communist regime and subsequent revolution in former Czechoslovakia. It is a story of a country going through a turbulent fall of dictatorships and of one family caught in the events that affected a whole nation.

The installation reveals a darkened room whose only sources of light are flickering projections on the wall. Close to the centre of the room stands a tower made of raw wood,  resembling watch towers found on the edge of czech woods where hunters wait for game through which 3 projections are streamed onto the walls. Three stories are told by grandmother, mother and daughter revealing the deep undercurrent of oppression which resulted in a unified national resistance and the elation that came after the symbolic uncovering of family histories, personal stories and experiences which had to remain hidden for so long. 

Although these stories are set against a chain of events that saw the end of the nazi occupation and the rise and fall of the communist regime, they are also uniquely personal – they are stories of three women, family members, living their lives as ordinary people albeit set in what to the western eye appears as extraordinary circumstances. This installation presents at once a comfortingly domestic scene and one filled with foreboding and dread. It is at once heart-warming and alarming. 

(excerpt from proposal, Mariana Jandova, 2013)