Kalbtragerin
Aleksandra Domanović
Published by Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, 2017, 48 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 21 × 29.7 cm
Price: €8

In her work, Aleksandra Domanović (b. 1981 in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia) takes a probing look at a wide range of phenomena of contemporary society, among them cultural techniques, scientific and technological developments, history and culture, popular culture and the shaping of national and cultural identity. Her work often has its starting point in the examination of the past and present of her home country, the breakup of Yugoslavia after the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the struggle for a new national and cultural identity.

For her exhibition Calf-Bearer in Bonn, the artist expands on one of her themes – Bulls Without Horns – and looks at current scientific developments in bioengineering, namely research carried out by Alison Van Eenennaam at the University of California in Davis who works on the breeding of certain genetic traits in cattle, for example the lack of horns. The artist not only presents the protagonists of these experiments in colour photographs, she also translates the underlying ideas into sculptures, which she produces by means of computer modelling, 3D printing and casting in synthetic plaster. Made of Corian, her votive stelae are transformed and abstracted depictions of the sixth-century BC Greek sculpture of the Moschophoros (Calf-Bearer) found in1866 on the Acropolis of Athens in the so-called Perserschutt, the bulk of the architectural and votive sculptures destroyed by the Persians in 480 BC.

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