Rudolf Sikora: Súhvezdie VAclava HAvla, 2026  ^SK

Rudolf Sikora — Constellation of Václav Havel, 2026
Banner, 12 × 12 m

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Pohoda festival, Rudolf Sikora — a defining figure of Slovak conceptualism — presents a monumental work in the form of a 12 × 12 metre banner. It will dominate the main stage and updates a similar installation the artist created in 2011. In Sikora's iconic concept of constellations, celestial bodies are replaced by his characteristic visual language — crosses and asterisks — while the centrepiece of the entire universe is a large neon heart. This references the famous symbol that was an inseparable feature of Václav Havel's signature. With this heart he sealed not only his personal letters but also official presidential documents. The heart captured his entire human personality, and in Sikora's work it evokes Havel's ideal of living in truth. In the context of today's world, the work restores weight to the values of civic and artistic disobedience — where disobedience is understood not as primitive rebelliousness, but as the highest capacity for thinking according to one's own conscience, in a radically non-violent form towards others. Through this work, Václav Havel symbolically returns to Pohoda, where he was present in person as a guest in 2008.