“A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.”
(Donna Haraway: A Cyborg Manifesto)
The exhibition Maidnetics examines the invisible labour of housewives, the fetishised female body, and the roles of objectification in the context of technological transformations. It draws simultaneously on Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto and Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. The show draws a parallel between the current social conditions and the metamorphosis of Georg Samsa’s character. Through societal pressures he becomes an inferior figure while losing his identity.
In this process the housewife is gradually transformed by technological changes into a multifunctional household machine, thereby erasing the personal aspects of her being. Through the lens of cyberfeminism the exhibition breaks down the rigid binary frameworks and liberates female identity from the constraints of the image of the automated housewife. In a group installation Zsófia Antalka, Klaudia Janusko, and Lilla Judit Sipos further explore Donna Haraway’s cyborg concept. Their works open up space for other aspects of intimacy, sexuality, and personhood alongside the functional practices of care, revealing the human complexity hidden behind the mechanizing nature of domestic work.