Ester Hotová is a doctoral student in the Art Education department at the Masaryk University, where she also got her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Art Education and Visual Arts with a focus on teaching. Her dissertation topic was Interpretation of current social and political subjects with the use of comics and graphic novels - she has a similar approach to her own art. Besides illustration and comic book art dealing with personal and critical topics, she also makes “Vulture Culture” art, which means cultivation and preservation of organic materials and products of nature including animal and insect cadavers.


At the KOMA festival, the author will showcase two pieces from her Shadowbox series, which emulate the form of an entomological collection. These objects delve into a wide range of topics, including overarching universal phenomena such as peace, the anthropomorphism of death, dreamlike and archetypal symbolism, and more. These will be accompanied by a selection of politically engaged illustrations.