Czech Republic

The heart of a giraffe in captivity is twelve kilos lighter tells the story of Lenka the giraffe, drawing on the history of Czechoslovakia’s acquisition of animals from the Global South. Interpreted through contemporary ecological and decolonial perspectives, the project builds a space for imagining a different way of relating to nature.
Lenka was captured in Kenya in 1954 and transported to Prague Zoo to become the very first Czechoslovak giraffe. She survived only two years in captivity, after which her body was donated to the National Museum in Prague and exhibited until 2000. Eva Koťátková’s collaborative project employs a transformative educational practice that re-imagines Lenka’s story as a poetic, embodied encounter, and as a place of critical intervention in the relationship between institutions and the natural world. Alongside collaborations with artists and composers Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser and the collective Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures, Lenka’s story is interpreted by children, educators and older people, with the installation facilitating multiple forms of storytelling. The heart of a giraffe in captivity is twelve kilos lighter stages belonging formed through emotions, touch and ecological relations, instead of fixed notions of identity, borders and nation.