When: 14 Oct – 28 Feb 2026
Where: M. A. Bazovský Gallery, Trenčín
Opening (Vernissage): 14 Oct at 5:00 PM
Curator: Veronika Marek Markovičová
Media partners: FOTOnoviny, Paradajs Photo Mag
Opening hours:
Tuesday – Friday: 9:00–17:00
Saturday: 10:00–17:00
A photographic project about the Children’s Village in Trenčín–Zlatovce. About its construction, operation, and personal experiences. About the community inclusion of socially disadvantaged groups. What integration challenges does the city of Trenčín as a whole face today?
The exhibition Architecture of Community Building by Kristína Seidlová builds on the author’s book project Forgotten Memory (2023), in which she comprehensively addressed the causes behind the creation of the historically unique project of the Children’s Village. Between 1974 and 2005, it represented an exceptional family-type children’s home as well as a complex that, in addition to upbringing, provided space for everyday life and education. Through a combination of archival images and her own photographic research, as well as interviews with former residents and architect Peter Brtko, the author analyzes the interaction between people and their surrounding environment—from the intimacy of interior spaces to the public space of the complex. At the beginning of 2025, she reflected on this theme within her solo retrospective exhibition at FORMAAT Gallery.
Architecture of Community Building, together with the accompanying program of the exhibition at the M. A. Bazovský Gallery in Trenčín, updates the topic of the Children’s Village 20 years later in the context of community inclusion of socially disadvantaged groups and the integration challenges of the city of Trenčín.
Kristína Seidlová (1996) is a graduate of the Department of Photography and New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (2024). She currently focuses on architectural and urban photography. Her projects address the memory of place and the impact of architecture, education, and upbringing on the individual. She complements spaces with photographic portraits or the human figure. Thematically, she reaches into history, which she confronts with the present. In 2024, she received an honorary mention for the book Forgotten Memory at the Faculty of Art of the University of Ostrava. For her most recent work Boundaries of Inclusion, she received a Grant of the City of Bratislava within the Slovak Press Photo Foundation (2024). She currently also works as a teacher at the Secondary School of Applied Arts in Trenčín.
Veronika Marek Markovičová (1983) studied Film and Theatre Studies at the Faculty of Arts of Palacký University in Olomouc (2008), the Department of Photography and New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (2014), and completed internships at the University of Vienna (2005) and FAMU in Prague (2013). In addition to fine art photography, she is involved in curatorial and educational projects and writes about photography. She is also the founder and curator of the FotoFoyer Gallery at KKC Hviezda in Trenčín, where she and Peter Marek prepare and moderate Fotopondelky—live meetings about photography. Together with Jan Viaz, she co-founded the website www.paradajsphoto.sk, an online magazine about photography, where she is responsible for the articles section. She regularly publishes in FOTOnoviny and collaborates with FORMAAT Gallery as well as various domestic and international photographic festivals (OFF Bratislava, FOTOpotulky, Rotlicht [Vienna], and others). She lives in Trenčín.
