elja plíhal portfolio

Stan/The Tent, kroužek intersekce at Matter of Art Biennale, Trade Fair Palace, National Gallery Prague 2026. Photography: Jonáš Verespej

Photography by Sof, collective reading at Světova 1, Festival of Queer Epistemologies, 2025

kroužek intersekce

Kroužek intersekce is a student-led, independent and imaginative space for collective reading and learning. It includes building facilitation skills of participants who take turns in facilitating the meetings. While discussing the texts, we focus not only on finding intersections of different social inequalities, but also on finding possible ways of transformation.

With this manifesto we rebrand our activities from Kruh intersekce [Circle of intersection] to kroužek intersekce [little circle of intersection]. We see the word „kroužek” as more accessible as in Czech it also describes a periodic afterschool activity for children mostly dedicated to arts and crafts. With this word we want to describe our efforts to disrupt the inaccessibility of theoretical texts. We also use the word „kroužek” to express our desire for becoming softer and more sensitive, as well as to celebrate childlike-ness, play, and imagination. 

The impulse to found the kroužek intersekce came in October 2022. At that time, our primary motivation was our personal need to create a space where intersectional feminist texts could be openly debated. Indeed, we lacked such an environment in our own institutions as aspiring scholars. The shape of our meetings has gradually changed as the group of people who attended and facilitated our meetings has changed. In addition to the actual discussion of the text, an important aspect of our circle's practice has become the opportunity to try out facilitating. We are also constantly cultivating our methodology through our interactions with the participants. Thus, now the aim of the kroužek intersekce is not only to find intersections between different social inequalities and oppressions, but also to imagine in revolutionary ways, to assemble or to disrupt hierarchies within our collective.

Balíček komunitní zodpovědnosti

https://balicek-komunitni-zodpovednosti.tumblr.com/

The Community Responsibility Package (BKZ) is an informal collective that explores ways to empower communities in the areas of managing interpersonal conflicts and building a culture of mutual care. The collective’s long-term vision is to offer education, tools, and support to organizations and collectives through workshops, methodologies, and facilitation interventions based on the principles of transformative justice.

The term “transformative” refers to a form of justice that believes that punishment in the form of isolation from others—such as “zarach,” imprisonment, or canceling—does not lead to healing; rather, the key to transformation lies in closeness and mutual aid. It is we, not the police or the state justice system, who have the capacity to prevent violence in the relationships around us.

The fundamental principle of transformative justice is the transformation of the conditions under which social inequalities arise and are maintained. In this way, it acts preventively against harm, which is an integral part of any society organized along lines of inequality—whether along the axes of gender, race, ethnicity, class, or, for example, disability.

The collective was formed in the summer of 2024 by bringing together individuals in the activist scene who share a vision of developing the principles of transformative justice and who have diverse experiences with violence and conflict in their relationships.

Self-care handout for participants of the After Soft exhibition at Studio PRÁM by Jindřich Chalupecký Society.

How to be "in it" together?

Have you ever been part of a collaboration that strained relationships? How did that make you feel? What might greater solidarity between the feminist and left-wing movements look like? And are we even interested in connecting with groups we disagree with? The aim of this guided plenary session is to invite participants to reflect on their own experiences and, through collective brainstorming, gather tips and tools for building flexible and resilient relationships within and between communities. We want to create a space where we can inspire one another and explore paths that participants can then take in their daily lives, in friendships, in neighborhoods, or in collectives. We’d like to make space for experiences from the margins, so if you’re not sure whether you’ll have anything to contribute to this plenary, you likely have exactly the experience we can learn from.

Facilitated in collaboration with Matěj Ballaty and Magdalena Koudelková https://sdruzeny.org/feministicka-konference-2025/

Workshop: Why do we have universities? Hraničář Gallery, Ústecký pride 2024

Workshop on how to give feedback, collaboration with Efko feminist collective in Olomouc, November 2025

Inersektionality & intergenerational dialoque - workshop at Divadlo 29 in Pardubice, in collaboration with Poli Antonenko, Ekumenická akademie and Broumov2025, wokrshop was part of You(th)Care for Change project

How can we make sense of ourselves and this world? Elja Plíhal’s drawings invite reflection on situations we encounter in everyday life: feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, inadequacy, loneliness, misunderstanding, anger, and fatigue, but also understanding, joy, solidarity, belonging, and love.

https://utopia.cz/cs/elja-plihal-ja-a-svet-jsme-jedno-vedeme-se-navzajem

The characters in Elja’s drawings intuitively seek an answer to the question “how does life work?” They try to work through their emotions, communicate their needs, set healthy boundaries, and above all, support one another instead of fighting against each other.

Děloha+: collective artistic research by Mariana Petřáková. Exhibited as part of the Reproductive Justice Month at Kampus Hybernská gallery.