Project: Ominka
Artist: Viktor Frešo
Curator: Marisa Caichiolo
Lobby

Ominka by Viktor Frešo is a memory embodied in a family artifact transformed into monumental art. This sculpture is based on the story of the artist’s grandmother, a former singer who sacrificed her promising career to support her family. In 1964, she brought a Fool’s Gold brooch from the USA to Slovakia, a memento of her travels and a symbol of her unfulfilled dreams. Decades later, Frešo reinterprets this sentimental object, creating a monumental sculpture that serves as a metaphor for the illusions and fleeting nature of material aspirations – much like the deceptive glimmer of Fool’s Gold.

In this work, Frešo revisits central themes of his practice: the personal archive and the vanity of life. By enlarging this modest piece of costume jewelry into a monumental sculpture, he questions the significance we attach to material objects. The sculpture is both a tribute and a critique, reminding us that what remains after people are not the objects themselves but the stories they carry.

Bringing the sculpture back to the United States, the brooch’s original country of origin, completes a poetic cycle. It symbolizes a return to the roots of a family narrative and concludes a journey that spans generations and geographies. In essence, Frešo’s artwork becomes a reconstructed family portrait, piecing together fragments of his ancestors through artifacts, memories, and their reinterpretation as contemporary art. Since the medium of the work is an inflatable balloon sculpture, the air inside also symbolizes the memories that can never be permanently retained. When the balloon is finally deflated, it reflects the gradual fading of memories over time, carried by the breath that once gave it its shape.