Exhibition text (written by Šárka Koudelová):

Amy Saikia Wilson’s installations are remarkable for their elaborateness, which is not governed by reason. The abundance of pendants and amulets, and paper, ceramic, and textile details that intertwine and accumulate evokes the chance discovery of a spiritual or religious site—a private shrine
encountered unexpectedly while wandering through nature or a forgotten neighborhood. In such a moment, one would likely feel an almost uncontrollable fascination with the sheer visual richness of the scene, coupled with an unsettling sense of intrusion. Would the urge to examine every detail of the
organic composition prevail? Or would it be the creeping anxiety that we had accidentally wandered into the site of a voodoo ritual?

The rituality that permeates Amy’s installations is not defined by the symbols of any particular religion or
spiritual tradition. Rather, it arises directly from her exploration of places where the veil begins to weaken
or rupture. This veil is the fragile boundary separating our reality from the other side—a realm beyond the
dominion of human rationality. Our world is structured by conditions of existence that maintain these dualities as a safeguard against its own collapse. Beyond the veil, however, human reason becomes almost insignificant when measured against the forces of demonic entities, spirits, souls, deities, G-d, death, and eternity. The mere thought of the veil dissolving and the two worlds merging carries the overwhelming force of an energetic tsunami.

Although Amy’s installations do not explicitly reference any specific religious tradition, their apparent openness draws upon interpretations of Old Testament principles, interwoven with philosophical conceptions of the universe that can also be found in polytheistic religions. Her worldview thus aligns most closely with Gnostic understandings of existence: faith in G-d and in the knowledge of the divine, where such knowledge itself becomes synonymous with salvation. Knowledge (gnosis) is understood not as rational comprehension, but as the discovery of the divine spark within the human being and the recognition of the immaterial essence of existence. Seen in this light, Amy’s installations become places
where the material and spiritual dimensions of the world have the potential to merge—sites of Gnostic
revelation. Yet it would be mistaken to expect monumental esoteric representations of impersonal
redemption. Instead, they are literally woven and molded out of humanity itself, with all that humanity
entails: wandering, dependence upon material objects of faith, impure intentions, endless struggles with
insecurity, and confrontations with one’s own inner demons. They appear as complex material embodiments both of this longing and of the journey that longing compels us to undertake.

The first stop along this journey is an encounter with death. We enter the exhibition through a scene composed of a projection of a young girl joyfully and yieldingly dancing in a cemetery, alongside physical trees—living monuments to impermanence—adorned with small trinkets, evidence of our struggle against the ephemerality of existence. The scenography then leads us toward a figurative installation of two girls lying in bed, whispering perhaps about their own romantic experiences, perhaps about the mystery of life itself. Serving as a kind of epilogue to the exhibition is a textile bell tower. Beyond calling the faithful together and marking the passage of time, bells also toll for the dead, announcing the end of material existence. At its base, the circle of the zodiac encloses a symbolic spring of knowledge. In Gnostic teaching, the zodiac itself represents the cosmic prison of material existence.

It is no coincidence that every human figure in the exhibition is female. Amy instinctively understands everything that eludes rational comprehension as feminine. This irreducible duality—like day and night, life and death, materiality and spirituality—is the omnipresent mechanism that endlessly tips the balance back and forth. Particularly in light of current political tendencies, it seems important to note that this duality does not stand in opposition to queer theory. Rather, it understands queerness as part of the feminine forces: forms of being that resist rational and binary systems which deny space to difference,
searching, mistakes, and the other side beyond the veil. The misuse of masculine power, whether by individuals or political authorities, likely stems from fear of the darkness and untamed qualities that are intrinsic to femininity. Such fear makes respect for these forces all the more necessary. Significantly, the
only element in the exhibition that appears conventionally masculine is a pair of legs protruding from beneath the bed occupied by the two girls. Are they those of a hidden lover, or of the body that two friends needed to dispose of?

The intuitive way in which Amy creates and assembles her figures—only later coming to understand them through the prism of her own lived philosophy and the cultural and spiritual heritage of her Indian ancestors—will likely be interpreted by local audiences as a reference both to Surrealism and to the
strong Czech traditions of puppetry and animation, particularly the work of Jan Švankmajer. The expressive faces of her figures also recall the work of performer, lyricist, puppeteer, and alternative-scene icon Marie Černíková, known as Bio Masha, for whom puppet-making became a way of confronting both oppressive systems and her own profound inner darkness. Quite unsurprisingly, Amy herself formally studied puppetry and puppet performance. Yet this experience paradoxically led her to understand puppets not as animated performers, but as objects waiting to be brought to life through the imagination of the viewer and the context provided by her through the scenographic installation.

Pleroma is the state of absolute fullness, the pure realm of divine energies—a transcendent sphere of abundance and light, the home of perfect beings. According to Gnostic thought, the human world came into existence through the desire for rational knowledge and the subsequent expulsion from absolute
being. Put simply, humanity itself becomes synonymous with error and constant searching—the very error without which we would not exist. Amy Saikia Wilson’s exhibition unfolds as a series of stations along the path toward discovering the divine spark and, above all, making peace with our own mortality.
Each station marks a place where the veil has been partially lifted. They function as intuitive portals to the other side, allowing fleeting moments of union with the spiritual and brief glimpses of the pleroma. Yet no doorway functions in only one direction. These portals are therefore inevitably open not only to transcendence, but also to dark forces, lost souls, and unknown entities. Their presence, along with the flickering moments of divine union, is announced by the delicate ringing of the wind chimes.