Aleksandra Domanović / Nora Turato

Aleksandra Domanović
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. 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.

The exhibition shows the development of a practice shaped by information culture and mass media in a post-internet era. It begins with with an early work made in Vienna while studying at the city’s University of Applied Arts. This is accompanied by the website 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) addresses the relatively unknown phenomenon of celebrity monuments that became popular across the region in the early 21st century. Another video, 19:30, completed in 2011, compiles opening sequences 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) (2024) and If These Walls Could Talk (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.

Exhibition publication
The exhibition will be accompanied by the first monographic publication on Aleksandra Domanović’s work, published in English and German by Kunsthalle Wien. Editor: Michelle Cotton. Texts: Carson Chan, Michelle Cotton, Aleksandra Domanović, Caitlin Jones, Pablo Larios and Marcel Štefančič

Nora Turato: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!
Kunsthalle Wien announces a new annual public art commission for its Museumsquartier building. Nora Turato (b. 1991, Zagreb) will inaugurate the Kunsthalle’s “Vitrine” series with a new 62-metre mural which will remain on view for a year. The work will extend around the south-west wall of the building and be visible to passers-by as they traverse the outer arc of the Museumsquartier. Turato’s text-based works and spoken word performances, examine the ephemeral and slippery nature of language and how we experience it in our daily lives. Her new wall painting  will employ the length of the Kunsthalle’s exterior to articulate a scream. This meticulously constructed mural, its typeface and the controlled application of the paint is conceived in direct opposition to the vocal sound that it represents, which the artist describes as “one of the most primal and uninhibited forms of expression”. Rendering its sound in a precise and stylised manner, it transforms it into an elongated utterance flattening and reducing it to into an image.

Limited edition
Nora Turato, Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!. Silkscreen print on paper, 70 x 100 cm. Edition of 50 + 5 AP, signed and numbered by the artist. All proceeds benefit Kunsthalle Wien’s programme. 

About the artists
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); Georgia; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (all 2015) and Kunsthalle Basel (2012). Her work has also been presented within numerous international survey including 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.

Nora Turato (b. 1991, Zagreb) has held solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (forthcoming, 2024); Museum of ModernArt, New York (2022); Secession, Vienna (2021); Centre Pompidou, Paris; The International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana (both 2020); Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto (2019) and Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein (2019). Her work has also been presented within significant international surveys including the Performa Biennial 2023; New York; Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art (2022) and the Belgrade Biennale (2021). Turato lives and works in Amsterdam.

Kunsthalle Wien is financed by Magistratsabteilung Kultur der Stadt Wien (MA7).The exhibition by Aleksandra Domanović is realised with the kind support of Slowenisches Kulturinformationszentrum SKICA, Vienna. The presentation of Aleksandra Domanović’s installation Becoming Another is supported by its original commissioner Audemars Piguet Contemporary. The new epilogue to Turbo Sculpture is co-commissioned with Museum of Modern Art (MG+), Ljubljana.