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Petra Feriancová
OFFSCREEN
Installation detail of Petra Feriancová: Echo’s Bones, Elizabeth Xi Bauer, 2026. Photograph: Richard Ivey. Courtesy of the Artist and Elizabeth Xi Bauer, London.
Elizabeth Xi Bauer is pleased to announce Petra Feriancová’s participation in the fifth edition of OFFSCREEN, taking place at the historic Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière in Paris. Established as a platform dedicated to experimental image-focused practices, OFFSCREEN presents works that engage with photography, moving image, archives, and expanded forms of visual culture. Originally constructed as the chapel of the Salpêtrière hospital complex under Louis XIV, the Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière is one of Paris’s most distinctive examples of seventeenth-century religious architecture. Conceived specifically for OFFSCREEN, Petra Feriancová’s installation, LIMBO, explores the archive as a sculptural form through a site-responsive presentation. Situated within the former chapel, the work considers how memory is inherited and shaped across generations, placing these questions in dialogue with the building’s history.
Working across photography, sculpture, and installation, Feriancová frequently draws upon personal archives and found materials, reinterpreting them through non-linear structures. Through subtle acts of transformation, household objects and photographs are reframed and juxtaposed, acquiring new significance while retaining traces of their original contexts, as the artist dissolves and manipulates images.
Occupying a carefully selected space within the chapel, LIMBO considers how archives may be understood not only as repositories of information but also as spatial and sculptural forms. An ongoing and evolving work, this iteration continues the artist’s long-term exploration of systems of knowledge, while engaging with recurring themes including motherhood, memory, and intergenerational relationships, particularly the dynamic between mother and daughter. LIMBO explores how social and institutional systems shape the way images are interpreted and passed from one generation to the next.
For example, Family (Vulnerable yet Everlasting) (2015/2026), incorporates National Geographic magazine images exploring biological maternity, alongside Feriancová’s own photographs, displayed across a double-sided leporello construction. For the artist, National Geographic magazines are a repository of personal and cultural recollection. Preserved by her family in Cold War-era Czechoslovakia, where access to Western publications was limited, they became formative archival objects and akin to a family photo album.
Through this specially commissioned presentation, Feriancová’s work enters a compelling conversation with both OFFSCREEN’s exploration of image-based practices and the history of the Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière, creating an immersive encounter between archive and architecture.
