Exhibition Details:
Fabrikraum celebrates International Workers' Day with the opening of Željka Aleksić's solo exhibition "Fabrication Error". The title refers to the defects in the industrial manufacturing process, drawing an analogy to the commodification of artistic labor in the free market. Her work explores the boundary between the materiality of labor and the creative act. She questions how our bodies as workers and artists are affected by the environments in which we live and work. Through her art, Željka Aleksić opens up a dialogue about invisible labor, especially that of women, and challenges social perceptions of value and worth, both in the art scene and in everyday trade relations.

Aleksić's installations, video artworks and performative drawings bring together numerous forms of precarity that are familiar to artists from third countries. Inspired by her condition, carpal tunnel syndrome, caused by low-paid care work, Aleksić transforms her painful experience into poetic expressions. The electrostimulator - a medical device used to treat the disease - disrupts her drawing practice, similar to the draining effects of invisible labor on precarious bodies.


Aleksić's references to the factory and manufacturing also lead to another figure that makes up the largest part of the precariat, the migrant worker. In another work, she tells the stories of three generations of women in her own family, visualizing her own migration experience through the analogies she draws between the nerves of the body and the road and distance.



Curated by Deniz Güvensoy

Dr. Phil Deniz Güvensoy is a cultural researcher, curator and artist based in Vienna. She is the co-founder of artist-run independent space, Fabrikraum.