Fulfilled Prophecies

BRNO ART OPEN is a festival of contemporary visual art in public space that transforms a selected part of Brno (Czech Republic) into an open-air gallery. Artists are invited to create works in dialogue with specific locations, their histories, present-day uses, and broader social and political contexts. The festival aims to make contemporary art accessible to a wide audience while encouraging new ways of experiencing the city and reflecting on the forces shaping its future.

Established in 2008 under the title Sculptures in the Streets, BRNO ART OPEN originally operated as a biennial organized by the House of Arts Brno. In autumn 2024, its organization was taken over by TIC BRNO, which developed it into an annual festival. The project now concentrates its artworks within one part of the city, allowing visitors to experience the exhibition as a connected route and the selected urban area as an integral part of its curatorial narrative.

The 2026 edition, titled Fulfilled Prophecies, presents eighteen artistic interventions created for the streets, parks, underpasses, and overlooked spaces of Old Brno. Curated by Silvie Šeborová together with guest curator Mira Keratová, the exhibition features works by András Cséfalvay, Lucia Tkáčová, Kvet Nguyễn, Dominik Styk, Vladimír Turner, Michal Šumichrast, Zbyněk Baladrán, Karolína Rossí, Michal Mitro, Katarína Bajkayová, Andi Schmied, the Cejla collective, Nikola Balberčáková, Denis Kozerawski, and Matyáš Maláč.

The exhibition asks whether the development of artificial intelligence and technological progress—amid climate crisis, armed conflicts, and growing social inequality—offers more reasons for hope or anxiety. The participating artists explore digital exclusion, surveillance, the privatization of technological infrastructure, and the concentration of wealth, power, attention, and data in the hands of a small number of actors. The exhibition also reflects on the weakening of public services, social security, and democratic oversight, as well as on vulnerable communities being displaced from their homes and everyday environments through gentrification.

Across different media—including installation, sculpture, painting, moving image, sound, and interventions in architecture—the works examine how algorithms and digital platforms influence access to resources, visibility, and participation in society.

The title Fulfilled Prophecies refers to predictions, dreams, and fears of the future, as well as ghosts of the past that reappear throughout the exhibition. It creates a tension between visions of a shared future and a sense of systemic deadlock. The present is approached as a space in which the consequences of promises of liberation and technological progress cannot be fully anticipated, and where dystopian visions continually return as warnings or uncertain possibilities.

The festival route begins symbolically at Brno Main Railway Station, long perceived as a complicated and contested urban space. Artworks appear at the entrance to and inside the underpass locally known as the “Mouse Hole,” before continuing through Denis Gardens and the streets around Provaznický Hill, between the major traffic arteries of Pekařská and Hybešova Streets.

This part of Brno contains a dense mixture of historical and contemporary layers: remnants of the original city fortifications, renovated and decaying apartment buildings from the turn of the twentieth century, and new real-estate developments. Denis Gardens connect different forms of urban life, functioning as a meeting place, a viewpoint overlooking southern Brno, and a refuge for people arriving from the nearby railway station, including those experiencing homelessness.

BRNO ART OPEN responds to these complex surroundings through artworks conceived for individual sites. The exhibition route becomes a walk through the city in which contemporary art allows visitors to encounter familiar places anew while considering the social, political, and technological conditions of the future we share.

BRNO ART OPEN 2026 takes place from June 12 to October 11, 2026, across public locations in Old Brno, starting near Brno Main Railway Station. A map of all artworks, information about the participating artists, artworks, and the accompanying program are available at brnoartopen.cz.