UN/CHAINED 89
from 15. 11. 2024 to 31. 5. 2025
Exhibition organized in collaboration with the Nation’s Memory Institute marking the 35th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution — an event that led to the fall of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia and the restoration of democracy in 1989.
UN/CHAINED 89 takes you back to the 1980s Czechoslovakia, when the totalitarian socialist regime feared the influence of the Western democracies and saw their cultural freedoms and modern lifestyle as a threat to its people. The regime however underestimated the youth. Despite the government's threats, students engaged in independent activities such as environmental activism, production and distribution of underground publications, and participation in religious pilgrimages.
Objects of everyday life – school notice boards, objects from mass gymnastics events and civil defense trainings, examples of youth fashion (including original punk T-shirts), and a wealth of period photographs transport you to both the Socialist Youth Union congresses as well as underground gatherings of young people commemorating John Lenon.
The second part of the exhibition focuses through photographs, period documents, and reproductions of student-made posters on the student movement during the Velvet Revolution 1989 in Bratislava and around Slovakia. From the founding of the Public Against Violence movement students became its closest allies and active participants. They created flyers and posters, mobilized citizens to join rallies, addressed crowds from public stages, and organized demonstrations. Town squares and university campuses became home to strong personalities who, even after 1990, continued to play an active role in public life and in the fight for democracy and human rights.
