Klara Hobza

For the new chapter of her ongoing project Diving through Europe, Klara Hobza enters into a dialogue with local graffiti artists m.i.u._madeinuniverse and 3rd.layer. Together, they collaborate on a form of cartographic drawing based on a given fictional scene: 

• Caught in the merciless rapids of the flood, Klara finds herself carried away by the River Traisen towards St. Pölten. The level of the Traisen is rising quickly, and its power honours the Celtic etymology of the “swift one”. While adrift in the current as it flows due north, Klara encounters a local diver, who helps her to retrace her route. 
   
• “No, you have to go that way”, the diver signals. 
   
• Entering into a graphic underwater dialogue, the diver points to a bridge pillar, on which Klara discovers cartographic markings. Amongst the various symbols, she deciphers a sign pointing towards the Black Sea that helps her to reorient herself. 
   

As the level of the Traisen falls, the rock formation is revealed and we are able to examine the petroglyphs, uncovering their historical significance as navigational aids for divers and aquatic creatures alike. 

In 2009, Klara Hobza embarked on an ambitious odyssey through Europe’s river systems in order to scuba dive from the North Sea to the Black Sea. Beginning in the Netherlands at the point near Rotterdam where the Rhine meets the North Sea, the artist set out to navigate up the Rhine to Mainz, then onward along the Main to the Main-Danube Canal. From here, her expedition will lead her along the Danube through Southern Germany, Austria, Hungary, Serbia and Romania before she ultimately reaches her destination, the Black Sea near Constanța. This extensive endeavour is expected to span approximately 30 years. After three years of rigorous training, Klara Hobza commenced her journey in 2012, scuba diving south-eastwards up the Rhine from the North Sea. 

The artist’s experiences throughout the diving journey are serving as the raw material that she then shapes through different media. When Klara guided us along her Diving through Europe route in Berlin in June 2023, she used a key phrase that still resonates today: “I dive at an artistic pace, not a record-breaking one!”

Klara Hobza (1975, Pilsen, Czech Republic) lives and works in Berlin and Paris. Her practice incorporates performance, video, drawing and sculpture and is conceptually held together by narrations of self-imposed endeavours. In her multilayered artworks, Klara Hobza captures natural matters in analytic and often also humorous ways, while maintaining an underlying thread connecting a sense of discovery, playfulness and wonder. Having studied under Mark Dion at Columbia University in New York, Hobza’s works and projects engage deeply with nature, featuring a strong interest in animal life as well as an investigative play on science’s limitations. While drawings play a growing important role in her practice, the artist also engages in long term conceptual works such as her scuba-diving project. Hobza’s most recent exhibitions include among others “The Breathing Trilogy” in Soy Capitán (Berlin, upcoming), “Interactions” in the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn (2023) and “Dem Wasser Folgen” in the Kunsthalle Bielefeld (2022). Her projects have been widely discussed in contexts ranging from art, science and technology to general culture.