Dialogue
Community Ecologies
1989
Dialog: Prague/Los Angeles began as an idea between two women: Barbara Benish (USA) and Zdenka Gabalová (CZ).
They had a vision to start a conversation through art that would bridge the two countries- in the years before the Velvet Revolution was even imagined.
Benish was searching for ways to expand traditional exhibition practices as an artist, which in California in the 1980's had hit a market high. She bonded with the artists in Prague and Brno working in the parallel structures and showing their art in the hops fields and courtya of Prague.
In Czechoslovakia the parallel systems' art scene was thriving; presenting a cultural phenomenon in the otherwise repressive totalitarian regime that had kept the borders closed to the west for nearly 40 years.
