Zuzanna Czebatul’s work fluidly navigates the psychological and material spaces of the overlap that often appears between the commercial world, architectural relics, and artistic production. Her pieces are littered with historical events, theory, humour, and kitsch that morph into both artificial and real gestures. For AB7, Czebatul presents The Singing Dunes, which focuses on the phenomenon of the naturally shifting desert dunes and the 1960s excavation of the film set for Cecil B. DeMille’s film The Ten Commandments (1923) – one of the most expensive Hollywood productions in history. The set itself consisted of a fully constructed city, which was too difficult to store in the studios, so it was deliberately buried in the California desert, only to be unearthed by archaeologists 40 years later.

This was an uncanny moment of accelerated history, complete with fake memorabilia and the deafening sound of post-modernity. In this simple reconstruction, Czebatul confronts the viewer with our own contemporary era as second-order simulacra through the words of the philosopher/sociologist Jean Baudrillard, who presented the notion of our living condition today as the “desert of the real”. This term also appears in the Matrix, when Morpheus utters the welcoming words to Neo as he wakes up inside a computer-generated desolate wasteland. 

Their New Power (Head), 2020
Sculpture, polyethylene, acrylic gypsum, pigments, sand, 150 x 240 x 170 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Their New Power (Chest), 2020
Sculpture, polyethylene, acrylic gypsum, pigments, sand, 110 x 165 x 160 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Their New Power (Paws), 2020
Sculpture, polyethylene, acrylic gypsum, pigments, sand, 175 x 185 x 75 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Their New Power (Back), 2020
Sculpture, polyethylene, acrylic gypsum, pigments, sand, 190 x 230 x 150 cm
Courtesy of the artist