I Was Too Shy To Speak

Baňka draws from his life in much of his work. It is through photography that the artist is able to externalize and capture his subjectivity. He believes that “Many people, men especially, are influenced their whole lives by their teenage years.” As the title of this work suggests, Baňka describes his younger self as quite shy. This photo, a visual manifestation of his childhood reticence, features Baňka’s own daughter and her boyfriend. The pair are connected by tangled strings of light beams, shooting from their tilted heads. Baňka contrasts the kinetic energy of these lights with the stillness of the couple’s expressions. They appear otherwise detached, staring blankly towards the camera. With their eyes averted, it seems the two are relying on an idealized sense of telepathy, embodied by the whimsical lights, rather than engaging in true self-disclosure. Here, Baňka makes a playful commentary on communication and intimacy, both things he would have struggled with as an introverted adolescent.

[Emelia Ho, wall text in "Suppression, Subversion, and the Surreal: The Art of Czechoslovakian Resistance," USC Fisher Museum of Art, March 9 - May 10, 2019.]