The Call of the Forest, the first major solo museum exhibition by Czech-American artist duo Kristyna and Marek Milde at Kunsthalle Praha in 2025, featured seven newly commissioned works exploring the symbolic relationship between humans and trees. The exhibition proposed forests and cities as interconnected living systems, inviting audiences to reconsider the boundaries between the natural and built environments.
A significant milestone in the artists’ careers, the exhibition attracted more than 34,000 visitors and received extensive media coverage, including features on Czech Television and Czech Radio, as well as in Forbes, ELLE, Daily Life, and other major outlets.
Kristyna and Marek Milde have long examined the language of everyday objects to address the complex relationship between humans and the environment. Call of the Forest presented a dynamic selection of new, ongoing, and earlier works that investigated the perceived dichotomies between nature and culture, highlighting an artistic approach the duo has developed over more than a decade.
Central to the exhibition was the idea that forests and cities are intertwined, living entities. Using the motif of the tree as a symbol of endurance, growth, and connectivity, the artists positioned the forest as more than a physical space—as a framework for understanding human interdependence with natural systems.
The exhibition brought together sculpture, installation, animation, and collage. Newly commissioned works included Arbomobile (2025) and The Call of the Forest (2025). In Arbomobile, a New York taxi was transformed into a living sculpture filled with tree species native to North America and later introduced to Europe, reflecting ecological migration and cultural exchange. The Call of the Forest is an immersive animation created from images of tree tattoos collected through an open call, visualizing humanity’s deep-rooted longing to connect with nature.
The ongoing site-specific installation In-Tree-Net, spanning two floors of the museum, blurred the boundaries between indoors and outdoors by using trees to mimic infrastructural systems such as pipes and cables that deliver vital resources to buildings. By bringing nature inside the gallery, the artists revealed connections between urban and ecological environments that often remain unseen.
Across the exhibition, everyday objects were transformed through direct engagement with materials rather than mere representation. Blending poetic sensitivity with conceptual rigor, Call of the Forest invited viewers to reflect on the natural systems upon which we depend—yet frequently overlook.
The exhibition was presented as part of the Kunsthalle Praha Invites series, which supports Czech artists in developing ambitious, research-driven projects.
