The Institute of Proximity
24. 10. 2025 - 17. 11. 2025
Forty percent of Czechs do not believe they can do anything to improve their relationships with their loved ones. Three-quarters of us are convinced that people cannot be trusted. We are a society in which mistrust and a feeling of powerlessness are deeply rooted. Our relationships are often formal, and we are lonely. And yet we are among the twenty happiest countries in the world. We have learned to measure satisfaction by material security and ties to our immediate family circle. Even though every second marriage ends in divorce, we always seek help and support from our loved ones in the end. And we also take care of them the most in the European Union, right after Poland. We know how to do the shopping, change the sheets, take our parents to the doctor, and cook lunch for our grandparents. But can we also hug them? Listen to them? Stop and be present? See caregiving not only as a burden, but also as something that can enrich us? When we talk about caregiving, we rarely mention that it brings us closeness, even though closeness is one of our most basic human needs. People who do not feel close to others have a risk of premature death that is up to a quarter higher.
The exhibition on the theme of care opens on six hospital beds transformed into art installations by leading Czech scenographer Marek Cpin. The key tool for understanding the exhibition is pause. Details from everyday life and the feelings of people whose lives have been reduced to the space of a single bed become, thanks to pausing, an opportunity to ask questions we are not used to asking and an opportunity to change our approach to ourselves and the relationships in our lives. However, the Institute of Closeness does not want to be a universal counseling center for solving interpersonal relationships. It does not want to mentor, lecture, or accuse society of insufficient awareness of a topic that affects literally all of us. The Institute of Closeness creates space. Space for a quiet encounter with ourselves to the extent that we choose. The final installation of the exhibition works with an image by artist Krištof Kintera and the mantra EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT, which reminds us that the only thing we have is now.
The Institute of Closeness offers a broader context for understanding the topic of care, which is the primary focus of the organizing organization MILA, and calls on society to take responsibility for it. Let's not rely on the system, let's not rely on the construction of homes for the elderly, let's invest in ourselves and our relationships. Because care is a relationship, and relationships are something that most people describe at the end of their lives as the true source of happiness.
It is clear what people are running away from when they withdraw from relationships. They are running away from hurtful relationships, from the pain caused by those closest to them, which is all the greater the more a person opens up, trusts, and relies on others. We are all familiar with this side of relationships. And in human relationships, we cannot get rid of this risk. We certainly cannot get rid of it by withdrawing from relationships in order to protect ourselves. By doing so, we reject not only risk, but also vitality, not only discomfort, but also the only source of happiness. The path that makes sense, then, is the path within relationships, in closeness to others, which carries us through conflicts in such a way that we discover a new dimension of ourselves and others, that we mature in them. Care is thus not only a space for giving or obligation, but also for human individuation, becoming oneself through one's own maturation, transformation through closeness to someone who is different from me and as such can offer me enrichment, expand my repertoire, and prevent me from becoming frozen.
Relationships from which we can draw and in which we can defend ourselves, if necessary, are even a source of maturation for society as a whole. A cultivated relational society has no need to hurt vulnerable people, envy those who have achieved something, or prevent the development of those who want to move forward. If we are looking for the core of democracy, it is in this space of society, not in political parties and their struggles. Let's be political in the most intimate way.
The exhibition Institut blízkosti (Institute of Closeness) is organized as an educational event by MILA, the only organization in the Czech Republic dedicated to raising the prestige of caregiving work. www.mila.je
text: Simona Bagarová, Alice Koubová