Klaudia Januško’s solo exhibition Under My Knife takes the contradictions of the modifiable female body as its point of departure. Modification promises self-fashioning, while also conforming to norms that determine which bodies are considered desirable. Cosmetic interventions and customizable video-game characters are placed in relation to one another: each holds out the possibility of another version of the self.
Female video-game characters have long recurred in Januško’s work. She turns fetishized images of women inside out while retaining something of the exaggerated and seductive visual language from which they emerge. Under My Knife extends this interest towards cosmetic intervention and the mutability of the physical body. Dry humour keeps the tension between violence and attraction unresolved.
The exhibition takes the form of a staged operating theatre, where the instruments of intervention and the object world of video games begin to overlap. The visitor occupies an uncertain position between observer and potential patient. Monologues by video-game characters emerge from surgical bowls placed throughout the space, setting in-game death against the ageing and finitude of the physical body. The title Under My Knife condenses this ambiguity: the body can go under the knife, but so can the images and characters with which the artist works. The capacity to alter can signify both vulnerability and agency—there is a difference between being under the knife and being the one who holds it. Januško deliberately works with the appeal of this visual language; its attraction does not disappear once its critical stakes become apparent. The desire for self-fashioning and the demand to conform cannot be cleanly separated. Choice remains personal, even as its forms are shaped by images, technologies and social expectations. Altering the body is therefore not only a personal gesture, but also a response to social and economic systems that shape, value and make use of the female body—even as the tools of resistance remain entangled with the conditions they resist.
Klaudia Januško is the winner of the 2025 Kassák Contemporary Art Prize. Under My Knife presents new works produced in connection with the prize.