Lactation art

Darina Alster is an artist known mainly for her performance. It's a form through which she can leave an impression thanks to her natural theatrical talent, her urge to deal with her subject matter honestly, her fascination with ceremonies, the politicization of the issue at hand and –often -- a dose of humour and irony. She is motivated to turn subjective topics into an intelligible form of speech though her direct interaction with the public. At the time of the exhibition in the gallery Sam83, Darina’s own pregnancy became a major point of focus and ended up being the main motif of the entire concept.

Darina’s original intention was to be inspired by the environment for which the exhibition was being prepared and use a template used by Sráč Sam for the display. However, during the process of preparation the original intention took the direction of performance once again and instead of templates, the artist created ritual marks which temporarily transformed into a double body. Some of the finishing touches on these ritual marks were a fingerprint mosaic made of gummy bears, for example. The video performance created for the exhibition was also based on “bodiness” and performance art. She divided Fight with the Angel (2013) into three parts which resembled fighting matches. The video shows Darina Alster fighting with Ellis Unique slowly and clumsily. In the first part One in me – Lunch Libre’s Mexican masks, their second fight takes place while a rope is being twisted around them and in the last frame they are trying to push through a fabric, resulting in only the silhouette of their bodies showing. Another source of inspiration was also a dream according to which the artist created shoes for a funeral.

The exhibition is—beyond a personal reflection -- also a celebration of the birth of Sofia Alster who, at the time of the exhibition’s opening, is already among us. The unwritten urgency of the art world to use such phrases as lactation art in order to even allow for the beginning of a discourse is disturbing in itself. A completely sincere and mood-lifting title could easily be: "I look forward to being a mom (but I do not know what to expect)." Sam, on the contrary, changed the title on the invitation to this invisible dictation to Lactating Darina , Art Alster.

Denisa Bytelova