Anna Hulačová, 2026
© Photo: Finn Waldherr

In the studio with Anna Hulačová

09/16/2026

8 min reading time

Writer:
Theresa Dettinger
Anna Hulačová
A woman with shoulder-length hair holds a wooden object and wears a patterned shirt in front of a bright wall.
Context
Anna Hulačová
Exhibition
Feminism
Contemporary Art

Wood shavings, clay figures, honeycombs, and feminist theory: In Anna Hulačová’s studio, all manner of materials and references interweave. We visited the artist in Vienna and Klučov and got a glimpse behind the scenes as she prepared for her exhibition “Abundantia” at the SCHIRN.

The air is filled with the scent of wood, and wood shavings cover the tables. Files, chisels, and other tools lie alongside pieces of limewood. Clay figures that are still fresh are drying on a plastic foil. On the desk, there are countless pencil drawings of female workers, next to them prints of paintings from Western art history and books on feminist theory critical of capitalism. While Hulačová was preparing her exhibition “Abundantia,” which opens in October at the SCHIRN, we visited her at the beginning of the year during her residency in Vienna. And we also visited her in Klučov, a quiet, rural village in the Czech Republic where she usually lives and works. Both spaces say quite a lot about the different steps in the sculptor’s artistic production process and the various references at play in it.

Woodworking set with a chisel on a workspace, surrounded by wood shavings and a black block.
© Photo: Finn Waldherr
Sketch sheets lie on a table, lit by a lamp, with its shadow visible on the wall.
© Photo: Finn Waldherr

Prater studios

The Prater studios, as they are called, are located in Vienna’s second district. Originally built in 1873 for the Vienna World’s Fair, the historical buildings were comprehensively refurbished recently. Since reopening in summer 2025, the studios have been assigned as an element of the ART residency program to international artists, among them Anna Hulačová. During her stay there in February and March of this year, she devoted herself to producing various new items for our show at the SCHIRN.

They include a freshly carved workpiece made of limewood that Hulačová will later insert into her concrete relief “Fruit Picking” (2026), as she shows us in a pencil sketch. The freshly carved branches are heavily laden with fruit, of which two pieces are just about to be picked. Unlike many of her colleagues in contemporary art, Hulačová makes the elaborately crafted elements of her work herself. Prior to studying sculpture at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, she trained as a cabinetmaker. Moreover, woodcarving has deep historical roots in Czech folk art, which Anna is interested in.

Elegant building with columns and stairs, surrounded by greenery and a blue sky.
Prater studios
©hertha_hurnaus
An artist carves a detailed wood sculpture of leaves and fruits, surrounded by wood shavings.
Image of wood carving tools and an unfinished wood carving piece with shavings in the background.

When designing new sculptures that she will later cast in concrete, Hulačová relies on clay. She shapes small figurines that serve as her models. In Vienna, she shows us figures with blanks instead of faces holding fruit and kitchen appliances in their hands. She also works with pencil sketches in which she records her ideas, such as those for the extensive installation “Still-life / Still Alive” (2026) that Hulačová is planning for one level in Hall 2. We see female workers at a conveyor belt in a factory-like setting. The metal wall cladding is meant to emphasize the clean, sterile atmosphere.

Another sketch shows the female worker at the end of the conveyor belt: Using a handheld mixer, she seems to be on the verge of crushing the large heap of fruit towering up before her – all the fruit that has accumulated, the surplus produce or the rich produce, depending on your viewpoint. Unlike the clay figurines, the face of the sculpture in this drawing is not a hollow blank, but filled with an indeterminate structure also replicated in her chest: sketches of honeycombs. The workpieces made of concrete will later be inserted into the hive.

Three sculptural clay figures lie on purple plastic wrap, each displaying different poses and shapes.
© Photo: Finn Waldherr
Sketch of a person arranging fruits and vegetables on a table, surrounded by various types of fruit.
Sketch by Anna Hulačová for “Still-life / Still Alive,” 2026
Sketch of a room with people at a counter interacting with animals and objects.
Sketch by Anna Hulačová for “Still-life / Still Alive,” 2026

Alongside the many sketches on the desktop are black-and-white prints of Flemish 16th-century paintings. They are genre scenes by Joachim Beuckelaer and his studio, which Hulačová uses as artistic models for her female figures and which she then brushes against the grain in a feminist vein. She depicts woman as market vendors behind lavish sales tops : fish next to meat, legs of ham and plucked chickens, sheep’s heads next to fruit baskets that are brimming over, pears, grapes, artichokes, and heads of cabbage. In (male) art history, fruit was regularly ascribed an erotic meaning in this context, something closely bound up with the female figure.

Collection of black-and-white prints with historical motifs and notes on a table.
From Hulačová’s studio: prints of genre scenes by Joachim Beuckelaer and his studio, 16th century

Hulačová tells us about the role of women in the food industry, which is today increasingly dominated by large agricultural corporations. These are often operations that straddle several sectors at once, such as meat and dairy production as well as fruit, vegetable, and grain processing. They rely on women as cheap labor, something that has historical roots, as Silvia Federici shows in her Caliban and the Witch. Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation. Hulačová is reading the classic of 21st-century feminist theory in the Czech translation. In it, Federici examines how the beginning of capitalism coincides with the exploitation and expropriation of women and women’s bodies, and what role witch-hunting played in feudalism.

Hulačová is especially interested in the historical perspective on the relationship between women and land ownership as well as their role as automated labor, something that is also related to her own personal experiences. Hulačová was born in 1984 in Sušice in Czechoslovakia, where she grew up on a farm. To this day, the artist remembers her mother’s exhaustion. Life was strongly influenced by the impact of land expropriation and the collectivization of farms under Communist rule. When Czechoslovakia was dissolved in the early 1990s, the state-owned collectives were bought up by large corporations, who to this day employ female workers under what are often tough conditions.

Paper drawings, a book, and writing utensils on a table, with colored paper also lying nearby.
From Hulačová’s studio

Klučov

We also visit Hulačová at her place of work and home in Klučov, in the countryside an hour from Prague. Along the regional rail line, rents are cheaper than in Prague – something that attracts the creatives. After graduating in sculpture in Prague and stays in Great Britain and South Korea, Hulačová now lives here. She uses the house as a studio and lives here with her husband, artist Václav Litvan, and their two children. It is here that she produces her large sculptures, which she makes not only from concrete and limewood, but also from honeycomb. In the garden, there are eight colorfully painted hives in which Hulačová’s co-producers and colleagues work. Hulačová places one workpiece each in an empty hive and introduces a swarm of bees into it. After several weeks, she takes the pieces back out and extracts the honey from the combs.

Through a lattice gate, a green area with colorful target boards and beehives can be seen in the background.
Beehives in Anna Hulačová’s garden
A bowl of fresh honeycomb surrounded by liquid honey and a spoon on a table.
Comb honey
View of a quiet street with residential houses, parked cars, and a blue sky in the background.
Village Road in Klučov

Inside the house, there are sculptures standing next to unfinished workpieces and shelves full of studies. Some pieces already feature honeycombs, such as “Bouquet” (2024), which will likewise go on show at the SCHIRN. The organic elements made of beeswax consist of a stack of several layers and seem to grow out of a glorious bouquet of flowers that truly bursts with life. However, it is not just plants that grow from this technical base. Some of the stems (or are they thin arms?) have small hands hanging from them, some reaching out to the flowers. Do they reference (manual) labor in agriculture? The flower bouquets that, back home, we can buy from florists or in the supermarket have usually passed through several stages, from being planted through harvesting, to transportation to the point of sale – even if this is rarely apparent to us buyers. The futurist, machine-like concrete base of the sculpture brings the industrial elements of production to mind.

Wooden sculpture with organic shapes and textured surfaces, in a bright room with shelves in the background.
Anna Hulačová, Bouquet, 2024; workpiece ribcage
Wood and concrete artwork displaying organic shapes on a table in a studio.
Anna Hulačová, Bouquet, 2024; workpiece ribcage

In the world of Hulačová’s images, humans and nature, culture and technology, are all closely interwoven. The wooden human chest in the studio, for example, is filled with honeycomb that resembles the lobes of the lungs. The workpiece is part of a larger relief entitled “Take A Deep Breath” (2026), which also comprises carved branches and intimates trees’ function providing us with oxygen. These eco-futuristic works that seem to have originated in a sci-fi world are part of the second section of the exhibition. There, hybrid creatures will also be on display: half-bee, half-human, the Alien Bees. They allude to Czech proverbs that are also prevalent in other languages. With their incessant activity, Hulačová’s female workers are not that unlike machines and animals.

The exhibition “Anna Hulačová. Abundantia” opens on September 30 at the SCHIRN, where it will run until early January 2027. The title references the Roman personification of affluence, who is associated with success, wealth, and profusion. In Hulačová’s studio, she uses concrete, limewood, and honeycomb to create sculptures in which the female body, machines, plants, and animals are inextricably linked. They visualize what often remains hidden behind the usually invisible labor and production processes that give rise to profusion in the first place.

Three figures stand in a sketchy landscape with abstract shapes and clouds.
Sketch of Anna Hulačová’s “Alien Bees”