The winner of this year's Jindřich Chalupecký Award for artists under 35, Kateřina Šedá, is the most radical choice by the jury in the award's 16-year history. Like other young-artist awards, the Chalupecký can be viewed as a societal bellwether, insofar as contemporary art is a reflection of, or reaction to, the culture at large. This year's pick is certain to spark its share of discussion.

That's because the winning project by Šedá, a 28-year-old artist from Brno and a fresh graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, is a mold-breaking "social action." Unlike most conceptual action art and happenings, the project took place not in a public space, but in the intimate sphere of her own family's daily life.

Established by former President Václav Havel together with artists Jiří Koláč and Teodor Pištěk, the Chalupecký Award in its first years went to artists prominent on the pre-1989 nonofficial art scene, who nonetheless studied at Prague's official art academies. Initially, the all-male laureates were at or near the award's upper age limit of 35 (with one exception). In a sense, the award served to recognize the achievements and struggles of artists who emerged and persevered amid the civic decay of socialism's final years.

Šedá is only the third woman to win the award, and also one of the youngest. She represents more than a generational break: With her selection, the award comes full circle. Her genre-bending work was developed with the help and support of her professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vladimír Kokolia, who was the Chalupecký Award's very first laureate in 1990.

By choosing this hard-to-categorize project by Šedá, the Chalupecký jury has signaled a harbinger of a more progressive view of nontraditional art forms, and in particular a greater openness toward socially driven art, which has retained the taint of the communist-era dictate that art should be in the service of a socialist society. At this juncture in the award's history, the jury — which changes each year — seems to be no longer looking to the past, but to the future.

Art with a capital 'A'

Šedá's project, titled Je to jedno (It Doesn't Matter), is unique on the Czech art scene, and perhaps in the world. The work was prompted by the situation of her grandmother, who decided after she retired from the work force to retreat into a life of absolute idleness. Her existence revolved around sleeping and watching whatever happened to be on TV Nova. She made no effort to cook, clean, get dressed, bathe or even click the remote control to a different channel. Her response to nearly every question by a family member was "Je to jedno," a common Czech phrase. Taken to this extreme, it became a declaration of her utter indifference to life.

Deciding to finally do something to help change the situation, Šedá literally drew her grandmother out of her torpor. She made a date to do a formal interview, almost akin to the intake interview done by a social worker, and in the process learned that her grandmother had found great satisfaction in her job as head of the stockroom for a hardware and housewares store from 1950 to 1983. Remarkably, she could recall around 750 items from the shop's inventory. So Šedá decided to put her grandmother "back to work" making drawings of all the items in order to "reconstruct" the stockroom.

Her installation in the Chalupecký Award Finalists show at the Municipal Library centers around a small table covered in poppy-patterned oilcloth with two chairs covered in homey brown gingham. On the table rests a box filled with her grandmother's drawings — starting with chisels of every description and running the gamut from scythes and sickles to dibbles and hoes — along with a handwritten inventory of 128 of the items she's cataloged so far, specified down to their size in millimeters, with their stock numbers and 1950 prices. During the course of their collaboration, as Šedá's grandmother was gradually brought back into the world of work, the apathetic "Je to jedno" began to disappear from her vocabulary.

While the drawings have their own poignancy and strength, they cannot be considered art. The other components of the installation — the interview, the written statement about her grandmother's background — are the project's documentation. The art lies in the idea and its execution, the result of which is something intangible yet transformative — the reawakening of her grandmother's connection with society. And the project is ongoing. Šedá has her grandmother continuing to do at least one drawing a day, which provides a topic for that day's communication. "It is an elixir for her," Šedá says.

But if a different member of Šedá's family, one not academically trained or having artistic intent, were to perform a similar act, wouldn't the action be viewed simply as a creative solution to an intractable family problem? Or would it be art with a capital 'A'?