ALL THINGS DIGESTING: Listening to your gut
Do you trust your gut? Have you ever listened to it — quite literally? ALL THINGS DIGESTING, a new exhibition at Prague’s Kunsthalle, invites visitors into a thought-provoking playground for the senses, where the artist duo sikau/pubalova explore what we digest each day — physically and emotionally.
Immersed in sound
The most striking impression upon entering the exhibition is the feeling of being submerged in a sea of sound. As visitors move through the exhibition, distinct audio elements surface from different corners, reshaping the atmosphere with every step.
“For us, it's really important to go beyond this visual dominion that we face all the time. We have all these mighty screen setups etc. But the radio is a perfect example of how effective sound can be,” explains Lea Luka Sikau, one half of the artist duo behind the exhibition.
“As a mezzo-soprano and classically trained singer, it has always been vital for me to consider how sound and vibration influence us. This exhibition is about everything but the visual. It’s about touch, smell, vibration and sound,” she continues.
Among the sounds visitors encounter are recordings from inside the human gut. Some were captured in collaboration with scientific institutions, including the Max Planck Institute and a laboratory in Spain. The project even involved working with patients with open abdominal access, allowing the artists to record the sounds directly.
Digesting eco-anxiety
On a daily basis, we not only experience physical digestion, but also “digest,” absorb, and process emotions, information, and anxieties – one of the themes the duo explores is eco-anxiety.
Their installation 'Turning Green' builds on interviews with Prague residents reflecting on eco-anxiety and the changing environment of the Krkonoše Mountains and beyond. Developed through a public open call in collaboration with Kunsthalle, it weaves participants’ voices into a layered exploration of how climate change poses, in Sikau's words, a “cognitive and behavioural challenge,” requiring both mind and body to adapt.
“There were people who came to us with depression. There were also people who said eco-anxiety doesn’t exist and wanted to confront us,” Lea Luka Sikau explains.
A playground for the senses
As visitors move through the exhibition, they step into a self-contained environment where scents and gentle vibrations encourage free association rather than imposing a single interpretation.
“It forms a touch ground, where you can touch everything,” Lea Luka Sikau describes. “And it’s a bit like a weird playground - there's even a carousel where you can actually turn while listening to a composition on ecological grief that you can hum and attune to.”
sikau/pubalova
Lea Luka Sikau and Denisa Půbalová have been working together for six years. They began with experimental opera and interactive performances, gradually moving toward multimedia installations guided by a post-anthropocentric approach.
Lea Luka Sikau completed her PhD at Cambridge and is now a fellow at the Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research at Harvard University, where she focuses on rehearsal ethnography.
Denisa Půbalová is a visual artist and researcher specialising in environmental philosophy, critical posthumanism, and technological infrastructures.
Discover deeper insights into the ideas and processes behind the exhibition by listening to our interview with Lea Luka Sikau.
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