You are kindly invited to the a lecture by Katarina Radaljac on Friday 9th of March, at 18.00, and to the opening of the exhibition Objectification at 19.00, in Alkatraz Gallery, ACC Metelkova mesto.

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The main exhibition of the Red Dawns festival, Objectification (PopredmeteNJE), exhibits artists who problematize the existence in the contemporary world. Their different approaches to creativity are linked by a common thread – playing with objectification in its various forms. After the opening Alkatraz Gallery will also be a space for socializing and the Info Point of the Red Dawns, where – in a cozy atmosphere and a pleasant company, you will be able to obtain all the important information and guidance to the 19th International Feminist and Queer Festival programme.

Outpour II (Izliv II) by Brina Ivanetič consists of plaster casts of shapes that look like a multitude of breasts taken out of context. The exposure of the breast – a tactic also used by the media to contribute to the saturation of our society with sexualized images of the female body – is used by the artist with a diametrically opposite purpose. These “breasts”, a form associated with “typically female”, are made from condoms, something understood as “typically male”, filled with plaster. With this reversal, the author has let us know that there is nothing typically female or male; all that exists are merely socially constructed and prescribed roles, which are evidently not stable if they can be shattered by a small intervention.

The whiteness of Personified Objects (Poosebljeni objekti), 3D prints by Dominik Mahnič, is related to the whiteness of the Outpour II, but these are, in fact, downsized canonical works, where the head of the subject is replaced by his own head. Personified Objects are powered by the possibilities offered by today’s technology, but are more than just fun testing and playing. Printed small sculptures, through their own objectification, also speak about a possible abuse of the technology of the ongoing fourth industrial revolution, in which the subject is not only replaceable, but also no longer required. By awarding the statues small dimensions, the artist also makes fun of the monumental canonical works of the phallogocentric society, while at the same time he plays with his own objectification which transcends gender. Depicting one’s own body is a feminist tactic that does not objectifies the other; instead of a model that was throughout art history of female gender, the artist portrays himself and through this reveals the absurdity of the practice of objectification and generalization in art and society.

Lea Culetto deliberately portrays her image in the opposite way – without the head. The artist explores the objectification of the female body in a patriarchal context, focusing on the fashion industry and its conception of female bodies as objects. In the work Your Housewife II (Tvoja gospodinja II), she links the character of a housewife; an efficient work machine and an object of desire – with an object of gastronomic lust, that is, a dead animal on a kitchen table. In the video which is part of the installation, the author takes the depiction of the role of a housewife to a kitsch-encased absurdity. While dressed in the underwear with trashy fetishist accessories, she prepares a plucked chicken with plenty of glitter, bringing the viewer, on a silver platter, awareness of the absurdity of informal social expectations about the orderliness, lust and prescribed, but unchallenged, roles of women. By excluding her own head from the video, as is often done by the fashion and cosmetics industry, she only emphasizes her statement of opposition to the omnipresent commodification of women’s bodies.

If the work of Lea Culetto gives a slight hint of the issue of the objectification of animals, then Barbara Jurkovšek takes a step further with her works, entitled Loved to Death, where she composes a human and animal embryo into one, hybrid image in a subtle painterly manner. In front of us is a fetus, depicted in the style of a scientific illustration, in the installation caught in a destructive “love”. The embryo is “loved”, because humanity can use it mercilessly in the name of capital – under the guise of love and care. The author doubts the “blessing” of birth, if life is intended only for the benefit of the ruling group and, at the same time, by merging the apparent contradictions (death / birth, human / animal), she provides for the transgression of a binary model that serves as allowance for the objectification of animals. At the same time, we must not forget the hypocrisy of the fact that the fetus is in fact only a part of the body of a being, but is itself the object of love, which is actually the objectification and fetishization of a pregnant person.

Michelle Wren in her work, Meat! establishes a link between the brutality of the meat industry and the indifference with which the society treats a woman’s body as an object. The meat industry objectifies “useful” animals by cutting them up and repackaging their parts for the purpose of consumption. In many ways, we can draw a parallel between this and the relation of the society to women’s bodies, which are often treated in parts and as if serving a certain purposes, separate from our/their subjectivity. The artist addresses the viewer with a critique of the objectification and commodification of women’s bodies as consumables. In the work Meat! she – with evident irony – compares the bra pads with chicken fillets. With this comparison, the author illustrates the similarity of the social relation to women’s and animal bodies.

These multilayered works communicate something similar to what Katarina Radaljac, a M.A. student of Musicology at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana will tell us in the lecture on the zoomusicology, namely that we are not objects, we are capable of self-awareness, creativity, we all have the right to protection against any form of pain, the right to the inviolability of life as well as the right to freedom. Unfortunately, in this case animals are not as lucky, as they are defined by the law according to how they serve humans. Katarina Radaljac deals with speciesism, i.e. discrimination on the basis of a species, within music and sound art. In her lecture at the Alkatraz Gallery, she will link it to gender discrimination through feminist lens. She believes that it is also necessary to introduce such an intersectionary approach in Slovene (feminist) space, which would contribute to the opening of new views on feminism, and is already a more established practice abroad.

Eva Jus, Tamara Klavžar, Ana Grobler

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Lea Culetto graduated from the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and Design (ALUO) in 2016 with the work Woman and the fragments of the fashion industry (Ženska in fragmenti modne industrije). In the 2014/15 academic year she received a special achievement award for Painting IV. Between 2015 and 2017 she participated in several group exhibitions: Mlada ženska umetnost v Šiški / Young Women’s Art in Šiška (GalleryGGallery), Embodiment / Utelesenje (Equrna), ROOMS 2017 Plus + (Kappatos Gallery, Athens, Greece), Transformation of Image (Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, Croatia), DSU ROG (Galerijan Zelenica) and had a video projection at the Aktualna Beauvoir event (Trubar House of Literature).
https://leaculetto.com/

In 2016, Brina Ivanetič, under the mentorship of prof. Sergej Kapus and prof. Jože Barši finished the four years of sculpture studies at the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and Design (ALUO). She is a recipient of a scholarship for talented students of the Municipality of Ljubljana, and also a recipient of the ALUO Prešeren Award. In 2011, she received a purchase prize at the exhibition Empire of the Senses (Cesarstvo čutil). From 2010 to 2014, she participated in several group exhibitions in Slovenia and abroad. In 2016 she prepared a solo exhibition at the Ljubljana City Hall (Gallery Kresija). In 2017, she also exhibited with a solo exhibition at the Alkatraz Gallery.

In 2008, Dominik Mahnič graduated from video at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (ALUO) in Ljubljana, and in 2013 he completed his master’s degree in video at the same faculty. In 2007, he attended a study exchange at the Wanganui School of Design in New Zealand, within the Leonardo EU-NZ exchange program. From 1996 to 2016, the versatile artist prepared 12 solo exhibitions at home and abroad, and since 2004, he has participated in more than 40 group exhibitions and urban interventions at home and abroad. In 2013, he was nominated for the OHO Prize. https://app.assembla.com/spaces/dominik-mahnic/wiki

Barbara Jurkovšek was born on October 14, 1981 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She graduated in 2006 in painting and Art theory at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. In 2007/08, she studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Lecce in Italy. In 2009, Jurkovšek obtained a master’s degree in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. She had 36 solo and over 50 group exhibitions and art projects in Slovenia and abroad.
She is active in the field of painting, sculpture, graphics, calligraphy and scientific illustration. In her work, she is exploring the boundaries between art, science and kitsch. For her creative process she often gets inspiration from her knowledge of zoology, botany, palaeontology and evolution of modern human.
http://bjurkovsek.blogspot.si/

Michelle Wren is an an artist, activist and set builder from St Helens, England. She uses art and humour to tell stories, highlights social situations and fights for change, because she thinks art and humour are powerful weapons. She works in many scales and mediums by using images, objects, cardboard and anything else she can lay her hands on. As well as working alone, she collaborates to video mapping, makes films, does public art takeovers and designs and builds sets.
http://unbastarto.wixsite.com/unbastarto/gallery

Katarina Radaljac is an animal rights activist and feminist, a graduate of the Master’s degree in musicology at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana, a part-time collaborator of RTV Slovenija on the Ars program (since 2014) and a violinist – in the academic year 2016/17 she is under the mentorship of doc. Luke Juhart at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana playing in the trio ImunNaŠalo. Since 2013 she has been writing for Glasna magazine. For the Ars program, she prepared a series of five shows dedicated to zoomusicology, wrote two articles on the theme for the Glasna magazine, presented her ideas at a performative evening in Španski borci and lectured at the International Student Musicological Symposium in Graz. In the winter semester, she undertook advanced study within a student-exchange program with a zoomusicologist, prof. Martin Ullrich at the Music Academy in Nuremberg, where she was preparing her master’s thesis titled “From Reviving of Audible Sensations to Interspecies Music Activity“.

The lecture will be in the Slovene language.

The exhibition will be open till 30th March 2018.
On the day of the opening the exhibtion and info point will be open till 00.00 midnight. On Saturday, 10th March, the opening hours are 15.00-23.00.
After the festival the opening hours of the Gallery are: Mon-Thur 11:00-15:00 and 16:00-20:00, Fri: 15:00-23:00.

Free entrance.

Co-organization/Co-production: Alkatraz Gallery, Društvo za kulturo inkluzije
Thanks to: Klub Gromka, KUD Podtalnica
Special thanks for help with setting up the work by Brina Ivanetič to: ♥♥♥ Eva Mlinarič ♥♥♥

Map of ACC Metelkova mesto

Link to the hi-res images