Sanela Jahić is an intermedia artist who constructs visual and technologically supported kinetic objects and installations. Through technological tools, she problematizes society and individuals in it. In her latest production the artist places the research of complex relations between technology and the social, individuals and their identity, directly into the context of the critique of capitalist relations of production. Jahić’s artistic practice often involves collaboration with specialists in mechanical engineering, automation, software and electronics. The exhibition is part of the Draught series, conceived to present young artists and fresh new ideas.
The exhibition sums up the artist’s recent intensely productive period and her original new way of entwining the mechanics of execution with labor issues, i.e., two frequently recurring themes in contemporary art which are rarely featured together. Since anthropologist Marcel Mauss’ essay “Techniques of the Body” (1934) we can hardly avoid considering the use of bodies like machines and consequently thinking in terms of construction, manipulation and social determination of the uses of the body (or people); nevertheless, we are still quick to make the dichotomous distinction between the human spirit and the physical structure/machine. In her works, Jahić highlights the fact that civilization is based on the idea of change and control, and that the automation and robotization of work processes do not mean liberation from, but rather the beginning of a new form of, control.
