Aleksandra Domanović’s monumental prints at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) in Glasgow reference a multitude of things at once — science fiction, animation, and real and imagined technologies, to name a few. Even their transparent material, Cuben Fiber, has been specially designed for use in space. But Domanović’s rendering of images from a gendered perspective transports what could otherwise be relegated to the realm of fiction into a social reality.
As you enter the gallery, the sheer size of the works — if not museum etiquette — will make you wary of disturbing the pieces. However, walking directly through the heavy panelled prints is welcomed, if not encouraged. Pushing the panels aside mimics the act of opening a door, as though the works themselves were taking you on a symbolic journey.
The first thing to confront visitors is an imposing image of the International Space Station. Domanović explains that the ISS is featured in the film Gravity. It seems odd for something as recognizable as the International Space Station to be qualified by a Hollywood movie appearance, but film criticism, particularly readings of gender theory in animation and sci-fi, informs all of the pieces in this show.
And yet it is not Gravity that comes to pervade the exhibition (on view through June 1), but rather that 1979 allegory of male sexual anxiety prevalent in the sci-fi film Alien. In the film itself there is an overriding sense of insecurity surrounding a potential future of sexual equality — particularly in its repeated images of childbirth, in which male impregnation not only becomes possible, but results in the birth of grotesque creatures. A fair amount has been written on what Alien conveys about male sexuality in the era of second-wave feminism, and Domanović channels these interpretations.
In one print, a bluebird from Snow White sits on the shoulder of the robot from Alien, (the film frequently references the Disney cartoon). Snow White pervades Domanović’s works throughout the show, and at the end, she reproduces an infamous rejection letter an aspiring female animator received from Disney in 1938. “Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen,” the letter explains, “as that work is performed entirely by young men.” It becomes clear, then, that this show is a monumental homage to a forgotten female artist.
A version of this article appears in the Summer 2014 issue of Modern Painters magazine.
