Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana to screen Jasmina Cibic Situation Anophthalmus hitleri on Thursday November 29, 4pm.
Jasmina Cibic, Situation Anophthalmus hitleri, 2012. Installation view. Photo: Pete Moss.
A screening of artists’ film and video work curated by Michelle Deignan, including works by Jasmina Cibic (SLO/UK), Redmond Entwhistle (US/UK), Patricia Esquivias (ES/US), Elizabeth Price (UK), and Rachel Reupke (UK), The Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana. Please contact [email protected] to reserve a place.
Jasmina Cibic’s projects are conceived as a type of gesamtkunstwerk, embracing variations of delegated performance and delegated object-making, combining works by specialist practitioners such as architects and scientists, as well as factories and craftsmen, chosen for their historical and contextual relevance.
In her new project, the artist investigates two key moments within the construction and survival of national icons and their myths, namely their invention and the chosen architectonic context that channels their perception towards the spectator/audience.
The project begins with the story of the discovery of one of Slovenia’s endemic species, Anophthalmus hitleri, a cave beetle which has recently entered the endangered species list solely because of its name. Discovered in 1933 and named by an admirer of Hitler in 1937, this blind beetle marks an un-erasable ideological moment as, according to the rules of Linnaean taxonomy, animal and plant names cannot be changed.
Cibic has worked with over forty international entomologists and scientific illustrators, including associates of the Natural Museum in London, the US Department of Agriculture, the Zoological Museum at Tel Aviv University and others, who produced illustrations of the hitleri beetle, basing their work solely on their experience and interpretation of the Latin name.
Maribor Art Gallery
Slavia No 11, Ulica Vita Kraigherja 3
Maribor, Slovenia
www.galerija.skuc-drustvo.si
www.jasminacibic.org