What I Know

A personal archive in postcard form

Independent project, 2023

Concept and text - Magdalena Zemanova

Graphic design - Martin Utíkal 

What I Know is a series of postcards that serve as both a message to the artist’s grandmother and a reflection on a family history shaped by the stationery trade under the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.

Combining graphic design, collage, and text, the project weaves together personal memory with historical research drawn from state and private archives.

The project explores the impact of political oppression on the family, including imprisonment for entrepreneurship, and the profound personal losses experienced by the grandmother, who before the regime represented her country in basketball, studied abroad, and traveled freely. Afterward, she was barred from working in her profession, traveling, or seeing her parents in prison. Presented through both graphic and textual elements, What I Know is an original, intimate work that recounts a story too painful for the grandmother to share openly, blending factual history with personal memory.