Join us for a conversation bringing together Czech artists Epos 257 and Erika Velická with New York–based artist and experience designer N.D. Austin. Together they will discuss ways in which they engage with the urban environment and public space. Coming from different artistic backgrounds, all three speakers explore how we experience, inhabit, and reshape the spaces around us.
REGISTERThe conversation will move between artistic interventions, sculpture, immersive experiences, and unconventional uses of public and overlooked urban spaces, while considering the boundaries between public and private, institutional and informal, permanent and temporary.
The talk will introduce their individual practices and open a broader conversation about the role of art in shaping our relationship with the city.
Epos 257
Epos 257 is a Czech conceptual artist whose work engages with the urban environment and its visual and social structures. Through interventions, installations, and other artistic forms, he has long explored public space—how it is used and owned, and where the boundaries between public and private lie. His work also examines the tension between art created directly within the urban environment and its presentation within institutional gallery settings.
He began his artistic practice in graffiti, an experience that continues to inform his approach to the urban landscape, site-specific work, and the boundaries of legality. The number 257 in his pseudonym refers to a former section of the Czech criminal code concerning damage to property. For many years, his identity remained hidden from the public; he revealed his face only in 2025, appearing in two documentary films. His work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the Czech Republic and internationally.
Erika Velická
Erika Velická is a Czech visual artist, sculptor, and educator. Her practice combines traditional materials and processes to create complex environments shaped by personal and collective narratives. Working with materials such as concrete, metal, and clay, she explores the structures of space, the histories and transformations of materials, and the fragile relationships that emerge between objects, environments, and people.
Her work embraces ideas of feminist monumentality through openness, horizontality, and an invitation to collective experience and discussion. Her projects have been presented in the Czech Republic and internationally, including at the 14th Shanghai Biennale, the M3 public art festival, and Donumenta Regensburg.
Since 2024, she has co-led the Sculpture 1 studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague together with David Fesl. She is also pursuing doctoral studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Brno University of Technology.
N.D. Austin
N.D. Austin is an underground experience designer and counterculture artist known for staging clandestine pop-up events, secret speakeasies, and immersive rituals in overlooked and unconventional urban spaces—from New York City water towers to abandoned railways.
At Studio N.D. Austin, he leads a collective of designers creating interventions that range from social infrastructure, floating stages, and residency programs to custom rituals, expeditions, and installations around the world. His practice explores how unexpected experiences can transform our relationship with places, communities, and the city itself.
