VIENNA.- Kunsthalle Wien announces a major new exhibition surveying the work of Aleksandra Domanović (b. 1981, Novi Sad). Installed over one thousand metres of exhibition space on the first floor of the Kunsthalle’s Museumsquartier building it includes sculpture, video, print, photography and digital media.
A graduate of Graphic Design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Domanović began her career exhibiting online and made her first exhibitions while living in Vienna. The exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien brings together works produced over the last eighteen years, including newly commissioned sculpture and video. It is the first exhibition of Domanović’s work in Austria and the largest presentation of her work to date.
Explore Aleksandra Domanović's work with Ars Viva 2014/15: Aleksandra Domanovic, Yngve Holen, James Richards
The exhibition shows the development of a practice shaped by information culture and mass media in a post-internet era. It begins with the website http:/ hottesttocoldest.com, produced in 2008. Programmed to re-order capital cities of the world in descending order according to their current temperature, it exemplifies Domanović’s playful yet critical engagement with geopolitics.
Other works look specifically to the Western Balkans. A new version of the video essay Turbo Sculpture (2009/2024) updates Domanović’s online research (begun in 2009) into the 21st century phenomenon of monumentalising popular celebrities across the region.
Another video, 19:30, completed in 2011, compiles video graphics and music from television news broadcasts between 1958 and 2010 (some of which were subsequently appropriated in techno music). The 2013 film From yu to me tells the story of the introduction and removal of the ‘.yu’ internet domain for Yugoslavia, charting the arrival of the internet during the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe. A number of works draw directly on the history of science and technology or the cinematic genre of science fiction to address questions of gender and identity. A large-scale installation from 2014 entitled Things to Come considers the representation of women in popular science fiction. Elsewhere, figurative motifs such as a portrait of President Josip Broz Tito or a robotic hand designed by scientist Rajko Tomović are recast within sculpture and prints that imagine futuristic, post-gendered, post-human bodies. These include a series of monolithic sculptures made in the tradition of Korai, a genre of ancient Greek sculpture depicting female figures bearing offerings. Domanović’s Votives (2016–2018) present a broad array of objects including basketballs and a sculptural representation of a genetically modified calf.
The exhibition includes a series of new and more recent works that consider the roles that science and technology play in representation and perception. Becoming Another (Ultrasound Beam) and If These Walls Could Talk (both 2024) are large-scale works employing the optical illusion named after the meteorologist Wilhelm von Bezold. These multi-layered works quote the history of medical imaging, making particular reference to obstetric ultrasound technology and the role that it plays in gender identification, women’s rights and the debate around abortion. In another series, Worldometers (2021), LED fans display historical photographs of doctors, patients, ultrasound machines and foetuses, alongside corporate logos and footage from gender reveal announcements. If These Walls Could Talk has been commissioned especially for this exhibition. It connects earlier research with questions of national identity and culture incorporating a diverse array of images including a 1960s portrait of the physician Ian Donald (who pioneered the use of ultrasound in obstetrics) and Slovakian folk patterns.
Aleksandra Domanović (b. 1981, Novi Sad) has held solo exhibitions at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan (2019); Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (2018); Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn; the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (both 2017); Oakville Galleries (2016); ICA Winnipeg; Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Georgia; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (all 2015); Kunstverein Hildesheim; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Firstsite, Colchester; Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain, Brest (all 2014); Kunsthalle Basel (2012). Her work has also been presented within numerous international survey exhibitions including the Greater Taipei Biennial of Contemporary Arts (2022); the 34th Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts; the 58th Belgrade Biennial; the Baltic Triennial 14, Vilnius (all 2021); New Museum Triennial, New York (2015); Shanghai Biennale (2014); 12th Biennale de Lyon (2013); First Kyiv Biennale and the Marrakech Biennale 4th Edition (both 2012). Domanović lives and works in Berlin.
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