Get in touch / Napište mi
lifebybro@gmail.com

česky​​​

BRO. is the artistic practice of textile artist and designer Ivana Kocmanová, centered on hand embroidery. Drawing from photographs of urban and personal life that form an ongoing visual archive, BRO. selects gestures, expressions, and fleeting moments and transfers them from digital memory onto silk. The slow, concentrated process of stitching stands in contrast to the speed with which digital images are produced, stored, and eventually forgotten.

 

BRO.’s connection to embroidery is rooted in family history. While in prison, Ivana’s aunt sent embroidered doilies home to the family. After her release, she taught Ivana to stitch. Within BRO., embroidery is therefore more than a decorative technique. Its slowness and focus create a space in which it is possible, for a moment, to exist differently — outside the usual sense of time and place, and beyond prescribed roles and expectations. This sense of inner freedom runs throughout BRO.’s work, through bodies, movement, gestures, human interactions, and emotions, as well as through a desire to push against the boundaries of what is considered proper, appropriate, or permissible.

 

Working with a medium historically associated with decoration, care, and domestic labor, BRO. creates intimate images of the body informed by street fashion and subcultures. Motherhood and feminism also shape the work. These subjects are approached without unnecessary solemnity, bringing fragility and vulnerability into contact with humor, lightness, and irreverence.

 

Detailed figurative embroidery, fine lines, most often red, fields of color, and the visible imperfections of hand stitching form BRO.’s distinct visual language.

Ivana Kocmanová has exhibited in the Czech Republic and internationally. She was nominated for the Czech Grand Design Award, and her work is represented in the permanent collection of the Moravian Gallery in Brno.

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PERMANENT COLLECTIONS

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Museum of Applieds Art, Moravian Gallery, Brno, Czech Republic

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AWARDS

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2022   Designblok Awards Nominee, Veolia Award for the best sustainable project 

2020   Czech Grand Design Awards 2019 Nominee

2019   Designblok Awards 2019 Nominee

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SOLO EXHIBITIONS

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2023   You Are My Good Days, Czechdesign Centre, Prague, Czech Republic

2018   Stitched Into Your Heart, Krystal Galerie, Havirov, Czech Republic

 

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

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2025   Life Lately, Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague, Designblok, Czech Republic

2024  Ručne? Stručne!, Galéria Statua, Bratislava, Slovakia 

2023  Goddess Bless Ya, Love Ya, Ciao!, Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague, Designblok, Czech Republic

2023  Good Times, The Gallery, Austin, TX, United States

2022   Posh_Trash_22, Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague, Designblok, Czech Republic

2022   The 14th International Textile and Fibre Art Biennial "Scythia", Ivano-Frankivs'k, Ukraine

2021   Ordinary Folk, Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague, Designblok, Czech Republic

2021   British Textile Biennial, Blackburn Cathedral, United Kingdom

2020   New Urban Tattoo, Designblok, Prague International Design Festival, Czech Republic

2019   Krehky Mikulov, Central Europe’s festival of art and design, Czech Republic

2019   New Urban Picnic, Designblok, Prague International Design Festival, Czech Republic

2018   Designblok, Prague International Design Festival, Czech Republic

 

PUBLICATIONS

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Designblok book 2018: Výzkum smyslu věcí, Profil Media

 

PROJECTS

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2019   Street installations, Bushwick, New York

2018   Street installations, Red Hook, New York