MgA. Mgr. Tereza Vernerová Volná (b. 1985) is curator and art historian. She studied product design at University of West Bohemia in Plzeň (BcA.) and at J. E. Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem (MgA.). She graduated master's studies in Theory and history of design and new media at UMPRUM (Academy of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague) in 2011. She was a co-curator of non-stop gallery Mimochodem between 2012 and 2020 and cooperated on project Design & Prosperity that surveyed how Czech companies are able to use design as an effective tool to reach economic prosperity. She is founding member and curator of a group of jewellery designers Unosto. Her texts and exhibitions are focusing on craft and design. She works as a methodologist at the Department of Applied Art I at UMPRUM.
The dissertation project Rituals of representation – Insignia of Czech universities since 1882 is concerned with modern university jewels. One of the aims is to document the border
(official, public, social, political, monumental, depersonalized) jewellery functions and in a broader sense of a functional object. The university insignia take part independently as representational objects, but simultaneously their existence is fundamentally connected to an academic ritual. We can see it as an event at the edge of composed performance where all stage sets and props have significant space, they determine the hierarchy of participants but also indicate position and opportunities of the institution as a whole. If we interpret it from anthropological perspective, it becomes a rite of passage that marks the milestones of a social status change. The project also pays attention to continuity of objects, their producers and artists in the context of fine arts and is also interested in connections with social and political positions of universities. It defines different artist approaches – those based on timeless representational stylization on one hand and those reflecting tendencies of contemporary art strategies on the other.
