REFLECTIONS ON RESISTANCE

Reflections of Resistance is a contemporary art project that combines personal introspection, political engagement, and material interventions into everyday objects. At its core is the high-visibility safety vest—a mass-produced, anonymous, and functional object that I became familiar with while volunteering at protests and Pride events. Each time I put on the vest, I found myself asking how such an object could be transformed to carry a personal narrative, embody an inner form of resistance, and reflect a broader political reality. This question became the starting point for a project that connects individual experience with collective affect, creating an open archive of queer resistance.

The project evolved through several interconnected phases that reflect both its methodological and conceptual development. The first phase focused on cultivating the position of the inner observer. During this period, I closely examined my own emotional responses within socially situated interactions, tracing experiences of minority stress, anxiety, and the anticipation of rejection. This process revealed that anxiety is not merely an individual condition but a consequence of structural forces shaped by patriarchal, discriminatory, and often Christian normative frameworks that continue to influence the lives of queer people in Slovakia. What initially appeared to be a personal emotional experience gradually emerged as evidence of broader social and political inequality.

The second phase translated this introspective process into material and visual intervention. The reflective vest became a surface for paintings, handwritten notes, abstract symbols, and dates documenting specific moments of lived experience. The recurring number 36, corresponding to my age, connects the series to my personal biography while establishing a serial structure through which individual acts of resistance are recorded over time. Each intervention transforms an anonymous industrial object into a carrier of personal memory and political affect. The fluorescent yellow colour references visibility, the Gilets Jaunes movement, and a critique of elitism within the art world, situating the work within wider political and cultural discourses.

The third phase expands the project through participation and collective authorship. Thirty-six additional vests are created by invited artists, activists, and participants, allowing multiple voices and lived experiences to coexist within a shared framework. A common protocol—date, location, intervention, and personal testimony—ensures conceptual consistency while preserving the individuality of each contribution. Distributed across protests, Pride marches, and other public gatherings, the vests become activated through the bodies of volunteers and participants. The work therefore exists simultaneously as installation, performance, archive, and political gesture.

The project proposes an expanded understanding of participatory and performative art by combining conceptual practice with affective and material engagement. Here, the vest is not a passive object but an active medium that interacts with bodies, public space, and social structures. Through duration, repetition, and everyday interventions, Reflections of Resistance develops a durational methodology in which repetition itself becomes an act of political persistence against structural oppression and minority stress. The work simultaneously constructs an alternative archive—open, participatory, and polyphonic—that materialises affect while documenting intersecting queer experiences.

The project’s significance also lies within its political and social context. The vests document minority stress and queer lived experience while connecting local realities with broader global struggles for equality and visibility. They foster solidarity, reminding participants that they are not alone, while creating spaces for collective care, resistance, and reflection. Rather than merely documenting marginalisation, the project actively intervenes in public discourse through artistic practice.

The participatory distribution of the vests further extends the work beyond the gallery. Worn by volunteers during demonstrations, Pride events, and other public interventions, they transform into a living, mobile installation that continuously moves between exhibition space and the public realm. The artwork therefore resists becoming a fixed object / instead, it exists as an evolving process that responds to changing political and social circumstances.

Reflections of Resistance contributes to contemporary artistic discourse by expanding participatory and performative methodologies while proposing new approaches to archiving affective experience. Drawing upon concepts of intersectionality and new materialism, the project connects personal introspection with political action without sacrificing aesthetic complexity. It demonstrates how everyday objects can become sites of memory, resistance, and collective imagination.

Ultimately, Reflections of Resistance brings together personal and collective experience, visual practice, performance, and social engagement. It is a durational project grounded in affect, participation, and political responsibility. By transforming a mass-produced, anonymous object into a living, affective, and politically charged medium, the project documents queer experience while simultaneously activating communities of solidarity and creating an open, evolving archive of resistance.