Tanya Leighton - Berlin

Tanya Leighton is pleased to present ‘Four Monuments’, the third solo exhibition in Berlin by New York–based artist Esteban Jefferson. Jefferson’s practice centres around questions of race, identity, and the legacies of colonialism in public monuments and urban space. Using painting, drawing, photography, and sound installation as forms of documentation, Jefferson depicts the focal points of his compositions in great detail, creating a stark contrast between the subject in focus and the surrounding environment. The paintings are left intentionally unfinished, creating a raw style emblematic of his investigative process. The scale of the works often references the tradition of history painting, where vast canvases enshrine nationalistic narratives and military triumphs. Jefferson inverts this tradition to memorialise and monumentalise the fugitive mark-making of the activist and protestor, whose disruption of the normal flow of the city is erased by the passing of time, yet – perhaps optimistically – can contribute to political change. In Richmond, Virginia, July 7th, 2020 , Jefferson turns to the removal of a statue of Confederate general J. E. B. Stewart... (truncated for brevity)

Spanning nearly 15 years of work, Alexandra Domanović’s first Scandinavian solo exhibition explores how the internet, gender and cultural memory shape who we are in a hyper-connected world. Aleksandra Domanović (b. 1981, Novi Sad) works across an expansive practice focusing on the intersections of technology, history, and culture. With a playful yet critical approach, she explores how identity and social narratives are constructed in a mediated society. In the exhibition Canopy Collapse , visitors to Kunsthal Charlottenborg can explore a major survey of Domanović’s conceptually driven and materially sensitive practice. Here, she transforms technological systems and cultural memory into artworks. Working across sculpture, video, photography, and digital media, Domanović explores technology through a gender-conscious lens, delving into themes such as the legacy of Yugoslav cybernetics and the cultural impact of digital networks. With works ranging from monuments to living international celebrities to genetically modified bulls and news broadcasts from the post-Yugoslav states, as well as references to the unifying techno rave culture of the 1990s, Domanović creates a complex and often personal perspective on how technological changes shape both who we are and how we remember.