LOCATION: Outdoor exhibition at Slottsparkens stage. MAP
Every sixth year, Prague hosts the Sokol Slet – a vast gymnastics festival in which more than ten thousand participants perform choreographed mass exercises simultaneously. The tradition has its roots in the 19th-century Sokol movement, whose gymnastics clubs not only promoted physical training but also played an important role in the Pan-Slavic movement and the development of Czech and Slovak nationalism during the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The organization was periodically banned, and its members were kept under surveillance.
After the Second World War, socialist Czechoslovakia embraced the movement’s ideological potential and further developed it under the name Spartakiada. By the late 1960s, the event had evolved into a large-scale political and cultural spectacle serving the ideals of internationalism and communism.
As the centenary of the founding of Czechoslovakia approaches, the organizers seek to revive the memory of this lost grandeur. Patriotic symbols, slogans, and historical figures coexist with the mass choreographies – an aesthetic that at times comes close to nationalist and extremist expressions.
During the 16th Sokol Slet, Gábor Arion Kudász photographed nearly one hundred groups and asked them to recreate their favorite formations from the performances. The images reveal both the pride of being part of the grand collective spectacle and the unique atmosphere that emerges in the moment, despite the rigid dramaturgy and the occasionally almost amateurish mistakes.
It was precisely these contrasts that captured the artist’s interest, particularly among the younger participants. Many gather here more for the sense of community and celebration than for ideology, identifying themselves less through national symbols and political messages than through music, sports, fashion, lifestyles, and the many youth subcultures of contemporary society.
Gábor Arion Kudász (b. 1978, Budapest, Hungary) is a photographer and associate professor at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest.His work has been widely exhibited internationally and recognized through numerous awards and scholarships, including the Balogh Rudolf Award of the Hungarian Republic (2013), the Robert Capa Grand Prize (2015), and a scholarship from the Hungarian Academy of the Arts (2018).Kudász frequently works within transcultural contexts and international collaborations. His projects include participation in European Eyes on Japan (2012), an invitation by the Hungarian Embassy in Hanoi (2019), a residency at Saari Residence (2021), and involvement in the Erasmus BIP programme (2025).
© Gábor Arion Kudász