This year’s last official TYPOSPOT exhibition will close up the theme of [1] with the its symbolic ties to the allegory of isolation.

[insulation] by Nikoleta Dekanová is the first installation not in a form of a poster, but rather a material play with typography, realized through styrofoam. With its fragile, but also stubborn body, its layers, and its natural hue, styrofoam becomes both the medium and metaphor of a surface that conceals as much as it reveals. Nikoleta works with this material by cutting, layering and shaping it in a way that reflects the invisible presence of isolation. Something, that is always here, always surrounding us, yet often unnoticed until you come closer to uncover what lies beneath. Styrofoam is literally the material used to isolate. To hide something. In plain sight.

Conceptually, [insulation] expands on the complex emotions of loneliness and detachment experienced by young people today. Pressure to perform at school, at work, and on social media creates a climate where many build protective, insulating layers, to shield themselves from the outside world. This exhibitions mirrors that very tension: typography that resists easy visibility, façades that keep things in, and a material whose function is to separate rather than connect. 

And because every insulation also has its pop-cultural insulation, the vernissage features as Nikoleta’s drink of choice the White Monster. To those who know, one of today’s most ironic digital symbols, and to those who don’t, just another energy drink. Funny how knowing and not knowing isolates us, huh?

Nikoleta Dekanová is a graphic designer, who is currently working on her diploma project in the studio Typolab, at the Department of Visual Communication at the AFAD in Bratislava. Her work focuses mainly on typography, which she combines with various other design disciplines. She is also involved in type design and sign painting, and organizes workshops on these topics.


This project was supported by Nadácia Tatra banky, Fond LITA and Staromestské kultúrne centrá.


Exhibiting artist:
Nikoleta Dekanová @nicoledekan

Event photos:
Ester Šmídová @esters.lens