2025
medical plastic
127 x 120 x 43 cm
Transcription from the audio guide written by Alina Kleytman:
And now—attention, fanfare,
the lighting softens just enough to highlight the shine of servility—
he enters the arena, Rafael.
And let the audience whisper:
“Oh, he’s such a suck-up…”
But isn’t that exactly what a true Diva needs?
He knows his place.
And that’s why no one can move him.
Rafael is not a pet.
He is a courtier.
Someone must be the first to applaud—
and the last to stop.
Because being a suck-up in the Great Diva’s Circus—
is not a flaw.
It’s a role.
And Rafael plays it flawlessly.
They say that once,
during an official dinner,
he knelt before her shoe
simply because she was especially silent.
Description/commentary
Welcome to the Small Courtly Zoo of the Diva—a spectral menagerie of devotion and distance. In this series of five sculptural creatures, Alina Kleytman conjures imagined beings forged from medical plastic: skeletal, sinuous forms that echo the anatomy of animals while resisting classification. Each PET—LOLA, PEDRO, ELON, KONSTANCIA, and RAPHAEL—bears the presence of a relic, a heraldic sign, or a spectral mascot of a one-woman empire.
Though they resemble fragile bone or fossil, these bodies are synthetic and untouchable, artificial extensions of care and control. Their curled tails and poised postures suggest silent gestures, signatures, or withheld stories—an allegorical bestiary where devotion is theatrical and irreversible. Haunting and ceremonial, these works draw on motifs of spectacle, submission, and imperial femininity. Kleytman’s creatures appear frozen in reverence, but beware: they may awaken.