The Skull of Descartes Tereza Zelenková

About the work

The Skull of Descartes

Fragments of the uncanny interiors from Zelenkova's photographs become symptomatic spots through which the "maladies" of time can be registered—fetishes, desires, reveries and dreams dreamed in the noise of the industrial revolution and early capitalism, which only the room, that private universe of the individual, with its heavy brocade curtains and upholstered furniture can still muffle.

[…] Walter Benjamin's observation that the nineteenth century like no other before was obsessed with dwelling, referring to a space that "like an alluring creature disguises itself, putting on the costumes of moods” best describes the melancholy of stuffy rooms from the time of the "Paris spleen", crowded room-museums that tend to archive their own tenants. […] We may ask a question at this point, aren’t our homes always at once universes of our individuality but also prisons that frame and expose our mortality?

Bio

Tereza Zelenková is artist who lives in London and Prague. Between 2007 and 2010, she studied photography at the University of Westminster, followed by studies at the Royal College of Art completed in 2012. She has taken part in a number of group projects, mostly in Great Britain but also in the United States, Netherlands and Switzerland. Her works are part of several significant collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Foam Photography Museum (Amsterdam), Musée de l’Élysé (Lausanne), Saatchi Gallery (London) and Fotomuseum Winterthur (Winterthur).