The exhibition of Romana Drdova combines the states of inability and fitness, approaching them thematically, tactically and therapeutically. By its allusions, materials and arrangement, the exhibition reminds of a corporate interior of a dystopic wellness center. However, the individual parts elude the overall atmosphere, disintegrating into fragments from which individual identities and identifications emerge and disappear again.
The two-layer glass case displays human body parts, a rib cage, a cross section of a skull, an outline of a kidney; alongside images that are fragments of human memory, symbols of beauty, surge and sexuality, an oath of loyalty. Somewhere between a commercial display case and an X-ray image. The perfect transparency of expensive acrylic glass, its magnificence and cool illumination evoke a kind of a beautiful, healthy and expensive vivisection.

Romana Drdova draws on perpetual fascination by the lived experience; the experience of an individual in a world defined by globalization, consumption, commodification and virtualization. She thus finds inspiration in fashion, gastronomy, design, advertising, cosmetics and generally product aesthetics which she uses and even misuses by exposing the absurdity of overproduction. The main motives in her final installation include emotional estrangement on the one hand and physical presence/experience on the other hand. The artist raises the question of how one is to cope with the need to feel something. According to the artist, a possible answer is given by the objects of daily consumption; by their pleasant shapes, materials and structures, they satisfy the need for the experience of touching. Drdová wants to stimulate this urge by the strongly haptic nature of her objects, a play with materials and with the color scheme. Touch is naturally linked to the need of intimacy and closeness. On the one hand, Drdová plays with inducing a sense of erotic tension (textile surface, physical fragments in the video), however, at the same time, she is also interested in the very opposite: a depersonalized, asexual form of emotional interaction; a faceless partner that can even be a robot. While we share our experiences and impressions impersonally through communication networks and social media or even with virtual companions, our immediate touch with others is modified by multiplying barriers; Drdová notices division and “protective” elements in administrative offices (counters), in restaurants (tables in separate boxes), in shopping malls, at airports and in similar “transit” zones, or even in places of pilgrimage and in churches which became a mere tourist attraction. The artist transposes these very elements into simple objects made out of acrylic glass and places them on an elevated platform so they do not escape our attention and perhaps show us something about ourselves.

Objects balancing on the edge of abstract structures and fetish blends references to ritual instruments and masks. The basis for the consciousness of one’s own individuality, identity, forms a physical body. It defines being in itself and at the same time as the external world through which our body experiences and in which we move through our bodies. Expecting their own body and thinking about what it is like to feel the outside world through other, strange skin, muscles and nerves are something that is inherent to all people regardless of gender, nationality, or racial identity. The curiosity of whether others perceive the environment we share together, or the world is different from their eyes, leads us to the desire to step out for a moment from our own body, to get rid of our common identity and to try to be someone else.