Specific, emotional, local
The idea for creating the Secondary Archive was not born at a desk. It grew out of experience – out of the body that has been at the centre of my work for years, but on the margins of art history. From my own body – ageing, ill, uncomfortable – and from the bodies of other women who tried to speak, but often their voices bounced off the walls of silence or were lost in the noise of indifference. I realised that our stories – those of Central and Eastern European women – are only present when they fit into a larger, more comfortable narrative. And if not, they are skipped over. They are too specific, too emotional, too local. Yet this is exactly where the strength lies. And that is why I set up the Secondary Archive in 2020, together with partners from Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Not as a quiet place to store biographies, but as a space where the artist’s voice – her word, her story, her perspective – rings out in full. No editorial filter, no institutional language.

Independent structure of memory
Each statement in the archive is like a self-portrait. These are not neutral notes for the catalogue. These are testimonies of women who have acted and continue to act in the shadows of politics, ideologies, systems of power, censorship and patriarchy. They have created in spite of all – and that is why their voices are so important today. Central and Eastern Europe is not marginal. It is a place where women’s art has often matured in isolation, in conflict with the system, violence and silence. The Secondary  Archive collects these voices and allows them to be together – not as decoration, but as an independent memory structure. The idea is not to add women’s art to men’s playbooks, but to create our own narrative – parallel, separate, sometimes uncomfortable. The platform was created to challenge the assumptions of the classical archive – it is intended to be a subversive space for discussion in which female artists are invited to reflect on their own creative activity.

Promoting equality in culture and the arts
For me, this archive is a body – full of stories, tensions, scars, languages. And that is why it is alive. It is an organism that speaks and remembers, allowing diverse voices to talk to each other – to find not only points of commonality, but also different perspectives and modes of expression. It is resistance – constant and unquenchable. It is a body that refuses to be forgotten. The name Secondary Archive is a provocation and a play on words that, on the one hand, alludes to the subordinate role of the countries behind the Iron Curtain vis-à-vis the First World and, on the other, prompts a reflection on the position of women in society, inspired by Simone de Beauvoir and her “Second Sex”. We want to promote female artists and equality in culture and the arts, enable artistic events for international audiences, as well as build reliable information resources and ensure their distribution both in European countries and globally.