Forged Territories 2007

The photographic series Forged Territories was realized within one of the preferred locations of the British Film and Television industry that is mostly utilized to stand in for the depiction of foreign and exotic landscapes. Within these the artist installed sculptural objects as plinths for taxidermy animals from the rental studio which is the main provider of props for the advertising industry.

In her series Forged Territories, the artist critically and ironically touches on the discrepancies between expectations and reality upon which depend all industries that rely on building the viewer’s desire.

The viewer of Cibic’s large scale photographic works is led into a zone of an absurd animal kingdom facing large scale motifs of unusual bestial objects. They seem to present separate chapters of a story whose development simulates the destructible nature of the “industry of new experience”. In this context, the dislocated animal figure functions as an authentic attribute of a specific destination and represents a paramount case study, with which one can describe the effects of exoticism produced by the media industries.

The works function almost as images of distinct tourist attractions. A stag and an ostrich, both placed on plinths, become sculptures, magnificent monuments placed in a forested landscape. The disappeared bearer of a new object of worship is substituted with its own replica. New territories, as the title suggests, are now forged. The genuine object strives to be revealed to the spectator as a monument or a fetish object.