Maja Smrekar

Opus et domus, 2018

performance, 2018

Opening of group show & performace: 10 July 2018, at 8 p.m.
Duration of the performance: Tuesday to Friday: 11—13 July 2018 & 17—20 July 2018, 10 a.m. — 6 p.m.

Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, +MSUM, 2nd Floor

After a premiere at Click Festival (Denmark), Maja Smrekar presented her newest artwork Opus et domus to Ljubljana public for the first time on the Heavenly Beings: Neither Human nor Animal group exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, along with a series of black and white photographs from her Hybrid Family project.

In the first two weeks of the exhibition from Tuesday to Friday during the opening hours of the museum, the artist and her nonhuman companion will be producing yarn from the dog and human hair. 

Opus et domus (2018) correlates to the Hybrid Family project in content and form. The service gesture of turning the spinning wheel involving the entire physical body objectivizes the female body as a means of production. This is increasingly apparent in the time of populism in which the significance of the nation increases, placing also great value on birth rate. Through such social regression the female body is often again sees as property of the state, law and ideology. This is why the artist reverted to this obsolete form of production in her performance, with the advanced technology serving to underline the contrast to the symptom. Smrekar includes her Hybrid Family in her Opus et domus project by producing yarn from dog and human hair, spun into a social fabric that is not defined by technology but by the probability of creating a completely new hybrid relationship. The archetypal relationship of humans and dogs forming a hybrid community thus paraphrases Frans de Waal’s conclusion that “the roots of politics are older than humanity.”

Co-production: Festival Click / Kulturværftet (Helsingør, Danska / Denmark) & Kapelica Gallery / Zavod Kersnikova (Ljubljana)

Supporters: Bikuben Foundation, Danish Arts Council, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, City of Ljubljana, Department of Culture

Collaborators and consultants: Lovrenc Košenina, Bojana Ažman, Michaela Selmani, Anže Sekelj, Gia Gruden

Photo: Sandra Odgaard / Thinkalike