Histories
Painting/ Drawing
1991-92
Two series from different cultural influences here represent a critique of historical "truths" and narratives. The "National Series" (1992) are each 24.5 cm. x 29.5 cm. Ink on found graphics. The "Liberty Indians" series, (acrylic paint on found graphics, 1991) depict pieces of the Statue of Liberty imposed on George Catlin prints. 52 x 40 cm. The idealized images of indigenous peoples, who were in fact facing genocide at the hands of European settlers, is in stark contrast to the idea of freedom represented by Lady Liberty.
...the cultural-historical formation called Bohemia corresponds often to alchemy or garlic, which doesn’t do justice to our onions or slivovice. The author feels however, the need to be immersed in historical memory. And yet she has created work in a long historical era of visual language, full of meanings, signs and symbols, and in today’s deconstructive situation, this social conscience is perhaps once again confrontational and the cutting edge of the spiral.
Vlasta Čiháková-Noshiro, Ateliér Magazine Prague 13/1992, Czechoslovakia.
RM: "How do you feel that your Czech heritage and living in Prague have influenced you?"
BB: "The 'National Series' (1992)...is a playful piece: a blatant joke on Czech (and therefore all) nationalism. When the Czech and Slovak nations were born, after the end of Hapsburg rule and WWI, there was still a princely elite. After Communism, they were left without property and retained only their titles and their names on some of the great buildings. This class of people was hated by the "proletariat" of the time....Czech Republic is now restituting a lot of these buildings back to the old noble families, and it is a hot issue here. I've take the most revered buildings of the First Republic Czechoslovakia, so carefully rendered in grahpics to sell to a jubilant public of that time, and basically grafittied on them. My "graffiti" is not letters, but onions and garlic- the cliche foods of Slavic cultures. In every cliche there is some truth (I think Kundera said this), and in the onion thing too. Here is a cultural icon transcending generations to become a rather quiet symbol of the Slavs".
interview with curator Rebecca McGrew for the exhibition "Hybrid Histories" (2000), Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, California
