Maja Smrekar - Darker, Lighter, Puffy, Flat

Artist Maja Smrekar challenges established notions of social structures, domesticity, anthropocentrism, family and motherhood while speculating about possibilities for cohabitation between humans and nonhumans.
The site-specific installation "unit: Hybrid Family" (2023) is an expansion of a project for which Smrekar spent three months training her body to produce milk to breastfeed her puppy. The artist explored possibilities for breastfeeding that are not conditioned by gender, reproductive organs or genetics, and offered a new, hybrid form of family.
The stylized living room in our exhibition "Darker, Lighter, Puffy, Flat" brings to mind the Biedermeier style and refers to the era of the Industrial Revolution. The rise of the middle class later established the ideal of the nuclear family and the home within the capitalist system. Subtly incorporated elements from Smrekar's previous project, such as breast pumps and the icon-like portrait of the artist breastfeeding her puppy, have invaded the Biedermeier idyll, queering a space otherwise full of heteronormative markers such as home, marriage, family.
Darker, Lighter, Puffy, Flat
29/11 2023 - 14/4 2024 Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier
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