Iconoclastic Digestion Systems

2004 | series of photographs



«In Iconoclastic Digestion Systems, a dog named Burned Bacon, two wild boars named Lord and Esmeralda, and a white stag come to the artist's aid to take down Hitler, Stalin, and the Pope, respectively.

In visible aggressiveness, rapid approach, and tentative scrutiny, the hungry contestants approach the masterminds of political and ecclesiastical power in their enclosures - and in the photographic moment unwittingly become iconoclastic players in Feldmeier's experimental arrangement.» (Isabel Zürcher)

«One has rarely seen dictators, leaders, and icons of any stripe fail as grotesquely, ravenously funny, and macabrely as in Sonja Feldmeier's photographic works. The Swiss artist, who always works conceptually, has arranged all kinds of vegetables, fruit, and meat scraps, bread and rolls, country choppers, and pig snouts into small sculptures that bear a striking resemblance to their models, only to then literally throw them to a hungry mob. The fact that Feldmeier's sarcastically and aptly titled photo series Iconoclastic Digestion Systemsis by no means limited to the symbolic feeding of historical villains may irritate more sensitive minds, but it is the actual provocative appeal of the works. The artist is interested in far more than just individuals, but rather in belief systems in the broader sense, in the relationship between mass and power, in symbols and icons, their identity-forming power and their end.» (Christoph Schütte, FAZ)



Exhibitions

2011 Festival der Tiere, Museum Essl, Klosterneuburg bei Wien
2009 modellhaft, Kunstraum Riehen, Riehen
2006 Il museo insostenibile, Spazio Culturale La Rada, Locarno
2005 Galerie Parisa Kind, Frankfurt
2004 Animal Destinies, Goliath Visual Space, New York
2004 from White to Wild, White Space, Zürich

Artworks from the Iconoclastic Digestion Systems series are in the following collections: Essl Museum Klosterneuburg near Vienna and Sammlung Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt