Zlata Ziborova

Poetic performance that explores interspecies relationships, emphasizing the parallels between human corporeality and non-human entities. Performance orbits around symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY), which produces bacterial cellulose resembling human tissue.

In a site-specific setting, the cellulose was carefully removed from a glass womb, symbolizing

a collective birth and the interconnectedness of all beings. Viewers were invited to consume

the fermented cellulose, thus becoming part of the collective body. Audience was invited to

engage in a sensory experience, reflecting on the fluid, uncertain, sticky and interdependent

nature of existence. Through this act, the boundaries between Self and Other dissolved, revealing

the possibility of a plural „Us".

Performers: Ilva Ieva, Emma Kabešová, Matěj Pšenička, Zlata Ziborova

Music: Fæ Bestia, Petr Bursa

Styling: Matěj Pšenička, Zlata Ziborova

Costumes: Matěj Pšenička

20th of June 2024 as part of my diploma project 𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐩𝐔𝐬 𝐒𝐂𝐎𝐁𝐘 at AVU Veletržní

Photos: Radek Dětinský

CorpUs SCOBY

Project focuses on a poetic exploration of interspecies relationships and the significant similarity between human corporeality and non-human/more-than-human creatures and entities. I explore these relationships together with the symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY), which metabolizes sugars and caffeine to produce kombucha, with bacterial cellulose forming as a byproduct of fermentation, resembling human tissues and skin. The foundation of the project is a vessel made of recycled glass, where, depending on the volume of fermenting liquid, various "beings" are born. The constructed environment of the glass "womb" thus serves as a biological entity, opening space for coexistence and interaction between humans and microbial life. In the project, I embody a microbially situated corporeality, which touches, tastes, nurtures, smells, converses, and observes this rich culture in an interconnected relationship. In this relationship, I dissolve my singular self to reach the possibility of a collective "we." Bacterial cellulose in my work becomes a metonym for the human microbiome, which is currently undergoing many transformations. Some of these are conscious, while others are a result of climatic and environmental changes. The microbiome and pollution connect us, starting from the stage of the embryo floating in amniotic fluid, across continents and biological species, as an evolutionary journey through space and time. Bacteria, yeast, and other entities invisible to the eye thus take on the role of witnesses and agents of our shared journey.

Recycled glass vessel, SCOBY, steal rope, metal frames, metal constriction, vermiculite slabs, soundscape by Petr Bursa& Fæ Bestia

2024

Glass vessel made in collaboration with Brokis Glass

Spheres of Intimacy

The series of objects, photographs and videos are in constant dialogue, exchanging positions, adding layers and finally becoming an integrated, living body.

The flesh-like, leathery substance of SCOBY (symbiotic culture of yeast and bacteria used in making kombucha tea) reminds us of aging, withering bodies as well as its regenerative and adaptive potential. The installation, forming an intestinal home, counters the established dualistic paradigm and blurs the lines between psyche and soma. Their inseparable relation and transformation from one to the other is illustrated by millions of bacteria in our gut, which deeply affect our behavior and well-being.

A series of chemical reactions within the kombucha fermentation process is responsible for bacteria multiplication, yielding healthy acids and a strong, thin biostructure that heals wounds. Human and more-than-human interdependency reveals more than just its benefits – it can also teach us about power relations, deeply connected to both ecological issues and social inequality.

Drawing from research of raw materials, Zlata Ziborova works with organic materials that can be found or are automatically considered waste. She reconfigures her own body hair and blood into useful materials, creating a poetic connection between production, intimacy and art. Exposing this processual assemblage resists fixed identities as all matters are moving, decaying or growing.

My Body is an Environment, suspended from the ceiling and painted with menstrual blood, resembles tissue and cellular patterns. Representing a body, it is plural, fluid, unrecognizable. This posthuman ontology “challenges the primacy of human heteronormative reprosexuality as the cornerstone for proliferating life, yet without washing away a feminist commitment to thinking the difference of maternal, feminine, and otherwise gendered and sexed bodies.”(Astrida Neimanis, Bodies of Water – Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology,2017).

My Body is a Factory consists of multitudes of small objects. Each ceramic part is shaped against the body, painted with blood and decorated with hair, carrying a distinctive imprint and DNA. The various biological materials bring out what usually stays hidden, their fragility and intimacy becomes inherently public. The screens reflect their subtle shimmering movement on to the glass basins – everything in the room becomes through its relations. Personal matters shape the shared environment as the gallery turns into a space of cohabitation, an unsettling, yet restful search for nurture and belonging.

Pragovka Gallery

Text and curation by Mia Milgrom

Special thanks to Rudi Koval

𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐍𝐮𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞

Nurture ↫↬Nature ↫↬Culture

Immersive video work/installation capturing a unsettling relationship between two kitten brothers I found, in my temporary house during my stay in Antwerp, two almost adult kittens searching for motherly comfort with each other.

They were in a house where nobody loved them, they were an inconvenience for the human occupants. Human or non-human all critters seek bodily connections.

Physical intimacy makes emotional intimacy possible. Nursing is a materialization of a relationship between all mammal mothers.

The interdependence of the body mirrored in the shifted equilibrium of nature.

Video 9'20"

I Feed Them, They Dress Me

“I feed, protect and house them, they fuel and dress me.”

A series of chemical reactions within the kombucha fermentation process is responsible for bacteria multiplication, yielding healthy acids and a strong, thin biostructure that heals wounds. Human and more-than-human interdependency reveals more than just its benefits - it can also teach us about power relations, deeply connected to both ecological issues and social inequality.

Text by:Mia Milgrom

Photo performance and research

Photos taken by Rudi Koval

2023

Workshop on Automatic drawing

for children of dormitory school in Antwerp

Automatism is a method of art-making in which the artist suppresses conscious control over the making process, allowing the unconscious mind to have great sway. I wanted to show that art is an act that anyone can do, and that art should be made not for the results, but for the act of doing. Proud of my students' creative results that were the base for this and semi-public space intervention.

2023

My Body is an Environment_ Mitochondria

Series of five menstrual blood painted fabrics that represent the connection between human, mammal and more-than-human bodies.

This project features intricate and fascinating world of mitochondria. These tiny organelles are often referred to as the powerhouse of the cell, as they are responsible for generating the energy needed for cellular processes. However, they are also much more than that. Mitochondria have their own DNA and unique characteristics, making them a fascinating subject for exploration.

Through the use of menstrual blood as a medium, the project also challenges societal norms and encourages a deeper understanding and appreciation of the human body. By highlighting the importance of mitochondria in our bodies, the project reminds us that we are all interconnected and dependent on each other for survival.

5* 300x45cm.

My Body is a Landscape

We live in crucial times of (non)humankind. As people, we need very little for happiness and satisfaction, but society tells us otherwise. Society tries to force on us lots of unnecessary objects as keys to happiness. I think that one of the ways to solve today's crisis can be thru confinement. With this project, I started to restrict my art practice. I started to rely on my body's production. It became the main producer of materials for my work. Any material can carry the weight of what circulates in our consciousness or unconscious and transform into awareness and beauty. Objects, made of waste, cease to be waste by being (re)used. We must begin to think of our bodies in new contexts and realize their creative plural potential.

The installation consists of a textile dyed with my blood, cut into fringes, and with added hair yarns ceramic objects painted with menstrual blood and decorated with body hair.

Plus videos:

Dances of a fluid body

Voiceful Dances of a fluid body

2022

Radically naked

Site-specific installation and performance made as an honor to recently passed photographer and naturist Karel Novák, in his hometown city of Prostějov. Novák was the founder and documentarist of a nudist movement in Czechoslovakia since the 70s. When I went through his belongings from his apartment/studio, I found an American magazine: Nude & Natural: The Magazine of Naturist Living. I was surprised at the naturist‘s approach to anticolonialism, body positivity, and ecological living. My colleague Adam Tománek and me made our selection of our favorite texts and handwritten them on log pieces of paper. I then did a construction for the texts and created a sculpture, from which we pulled the texts and read them out loud. Then we went into a reconstruction of Novák living room/studio and sat there picking up the magazine and reading our favorite texts from the source material.

Sculpture: paper,steal cable,

Performance :15‘-20‘

Performers: Dominic Hafner, Adam Tománek, Zlata Ziborova

2022

Actually, You Woke Up with the Smell of Orange on Your Fingers

Performance with Mia Milgrom for the exhibit of Barbora Volfová & Edita Štrajtová

2022

LandEscape

A short film where landscape and mysticism are the main characters of a story.Landscape in film is an atmosphere for a story, a setting for action, there, but in the background. But even if we take out the action, it's still something that makes us feel a certain way. We still try to implement a story, a narrative that our mind so desperately seeks. Landscape mirrors our uncertainty about ourselves and the world around us. My aim was to work intuitively because the film had to reflect the subconscious. I let the filming process speak to me; therefore my working method was reactive. I allowed my intuition to dominate my working process. In the time of making this project, I studied deeply David Lynche’s work and his creative process, queer ecologies, filmmaking, schizophrenic philosophies, and digital screen technologies.

9’54

2021

Connection Fusion Coexistence

This project was made for a public space opencall. I collaborated on with architecture student Marko Čambor. My input into the project was my long term work with ceramic clay, my body and its connection to the landscape and nature. Intentionally physically connecting the female body and plants to emphasize the fact that both need respect and rights. Women and nature are linked not because nature is stereotyped as the domain of women, but because they share the same origin of oppression - patriarchy and capitalism. In the creation of the relief, we deliberately play with macro and micro views of the world. Objects are bodies, they are solid and fluid, they are living and non-living, they do not have to be in opposition to each other but become a unified organism. When we imprint our identity on the landscape we live in, we cease to see it as something external, something distant, or something we should overcome or even fight with. For the final realisation we wanted to create a self-contained, independent and temporary work in which the ceramic reliefs would be inserted into a cut-out of the landscape with planted various plants, allowing the installation to change naturally over time.

The project was awarded 3rd place in the CirculUM competition of the Art for the City- Gallery of the City of Prague.

2020

Unbind me

A video-performance reacting to a society that fetishizes women and their features. We can’t even showcase our beauty freely on platforms such as Facebook or Instagram, in summer by the swimming pool, and worse of all, not even use them publicly for their purpose of nursing a child. By asserting control over my form, I confound expectations of what it means to be the 'object'.

In the video, the viewer looks back at how such a form/mold of attachment is formed, how we gradually get to a liquid beginning from solid matter by gradual removal. I look directly into the camera so it seems like I am watching the viewer who is watching me and what is being done with me. Sometimes it's unpleasant. As if I was judging them? The subjects, of interest in the video, are my breasts, from which gypsum is removed in an automated casting operation.

The installation consists of a video-performance and installation with an oval-shaped belt (like the once in a factory or a supermarket) which has plaster molds placed on or beside it. The belt represents an estrangement our society puts on our bodies. The body is treated like a product. The rubber belt is rounded up and cyclic. A cycle is usually associated with positive perceptions such as life cycle, seasons, planetary movement. But it can also mean a cycle that is a vicious circle where similar patterns of behavior and actions are repeated and we are unable to break free of them.

7‘57

2019/2020

Performers: Zlata Ziborova, Markéta Špundová

As we gather

As we gather is a multi-media installation creating a shared space for meeting, communicating and processing. Through everyday rituals, we establish a feeling of continuity, which helps us relate to other people and reconnect to nature. Combining a short documentary video about a Serbian ritual of caring for the family grave, with hand-made ceramic cups and hand-made soft pillow objects. That leaves room for new interactions and understanding. Throughout the whole exhibit, you would be accompanied by short texts and growing plants. The pillow objects were there, not only for their visual appearance but for actual use as an object you soul sit on and chill.

Me and Mia Milgrom partnered to create an environment, in which we try to point out things that we feel that our society is loosing :

- Searching for meanings in everydayness-

-The feeling of slowing down-

-Sharing something that can‘t be grasped or used-

Sometimes we can find calmness, peace, and advancement in slowing down by repetition and inclusion of new views and actions, which can seem absurd and won’t give us any material gain but can help us get closer to inner balance. The mundane won’t become a stereotype, but instead, it will be a connection to our sources and roots.

Project made together with Mia Milgrom

2019

Sorrow slowly becomes part of our lives and we change with it

When I was coping with death, I started to think about my existence. I remembered a story of Luciano De Crescenzo from a book about Greek philosophers. In this story is Pepino Russo as a lunatic who decorates trees in streets with children’s toys. He does that because he believes that all objects with which we share our existence have a soul. They gain it from us every day when we use them and care for them etc. When he saw his father’s dead body it occurred to him. He saw the corpse and felt nothing. But after entering into his room he found where he hid: ‘into a Scottish plum, into a pen with golden shutter, into a leather armchair with frills, and lots of other things he shared his loneliness with.’.

This philosopher touched me a lot with his thought. And I felt that a clear metaphor for this phenomenon was touch. So I printed my face, and other parts of my body which I feel touch our world, into plaster. Then I used the molds as transferors of energy and souls. I made relief like picture/painting of souls. As a base I used cotton fabric which looks and feels similar to bed sheets. The figures are used to reflect the tension and dialogs in me and every one of us. Sleep is another symbol of freeing the mind and soul. As a title I used a sentence with mutable purport. At first it feels negative but gradually the meaning changes. We find out that a future might be possible.

650x200 cm

2018

Postcards

This project is made by postcards bought and photographed on my journey from Prague to London, through several stops I made to get there. Postcards hold just an information and a date they were captured and a location. I made those them by an app made by the Czech Postoffice because I was deeply fascinated by how information gets virtually surpassed into a material souvenir. As I was traveling, I still didn't get rid of the basics of buying those postcards. I simply transferred them into my other destination and left them there to be an advert for the city I´ve been to.

Photographs hold all the important information, that is why I and the text on the postcard are purely informative. I wanted a neutral material, because first of all, they are just a collection of my travels.

2017

ZLATA ZIBOROVA

Drawing from research of raw materials, Zlata Ziborova works with organic materials that can be found or are automatically considered waste. She recongures her own body hair and blood into useful materials, creating a poetic connection between production, intimacy and art.She is interested in ecofeminist theory and interspecies relations. Working with organic waste, she develops collaborations with bacteria, yeast and animals. Since 2021, she has been working on a project My Body is a Factory which strives to reuse and rely on her own body’s production. Working with body hair and blood, her body becomes the primary source of materials used in her works.

Education:

2021-2024 New media studies 2, Academy of Fine Arts in Prague guided by Katerina Olivová and Darina Alster

2023-2024 TROP Institute for Artistic Research, Ljubljana, with Maja Smrekar

2023 Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, In Situ3

2021 Internship at The Visiting Artist Studio of AAAD in Prague, guided by Maja Smrekar

2020 Internship at The Studio of Visiting Artist AVU Prague, guided by Paulina Olowska

2018-2022 Academy of Fine Arts in Prague Intermedia Studies I guided by Milena Dopitová

2012 – 2016 The Vaclav Hollar Collage and Secondary School of Fine Arts Ceramic studies

Exhibitions:

(31/05/23-27/07/24) The Polymorphs Between Us, Group show, Světova 1, Prague

(15/05/2024-19/06/2024) Queer Ecologies, group show, Galerie FaVU, Brno

(05/10/2023-02./11/2023) Spheres of Intimacy, solo show, Pragovka Gallery, Prague

(14/10/2023-25/10/2023) TOO MANY DINNER PARTIES, group show, Edel Extra, Nuremberg

(14/10/2023-02/11/2023)- Fearlessness, group show, Photogather Gallery, Zlín

(22/06/2023-24/06/2023) Performance Platform Lublin 2023, Galeria Labirynt, Lublin

(22/05/2023-24/06/2023) Too Many Dinner Parties, group show, POP-UP Galerie AVU https://avu.cz/aktualita/too-many-dinner-parties

(11/03/23-17/03/23) HORTUS CONCLUSUS, group show, Wintertuin, Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp

(15/11/20/22-29/11/22) Herstorie, group show, Library of Academy of Fine Arts in Prague

(18/10/22-08/11/22) Goosebumps, group show with Viktorie Macánová, Markéta Špundová, Zuzana Trachtová- Studio Prám, Prague

(15/09/22- 23/10/22) Living room of Karel Novák- performance Radically Naked, Muzeum and Gallery Prostějov, Prostějov

(11/06/19 – 12/06/19)Liebers/ Milenci, GaP, Znojmo

(24/04/19 – 16/05/19) As we gather, Světova 1 Gallery, Prague

(12/02/19 – 26/02/19) U nás se svítí, HYB4, Prague

(10/06/18 – 03/08/18) Ting Tar Tid / TTT, Sam 83

zlataziborova@gmail.com