Photos of BSA 2025 # 3

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Photos-of-year-2025-ani-C.gif

The most successful murals are created within the context of a community. Too often, street art festivals operate with little regard for the neighbors they affect—the residents, families, and sacred spaces that surround the work. What is framed as a “gift” can instead resemble a form of cultural imperialism, delivered by self-appointed benefactors.

In Prague this fall, however, we saw a contemporary approach applied to the portrait of a culturally significant figure, and the result felt measured, grounded, and in balance with its setting. Here is a modernist profile of Milada Horáková, who was a Czech democratic politician and resistance fighter executed in a 1950 Stalinist show trial. In Prague she stands as a powerful cultural symbol of moral courage, civic resistance, and the enduring trauma of communist repression, commemorated through memorials, street names, and public remembrance.

At the base of the graphically interrupted portrait is a quote from her, translated as “Walk through the world with your eyes open and listen not only to your pain and concerns, but also to the pains, concerns and desires of others.”

Milada Horáková, by Toy Box.

Toy Box. In collaboration with Urban Pictus. A portrait of Milada Horakova marking the 75th anniversary of her judicial murder. Prague, Czech Republic. November 2025. (photo © Jaime Rojo)