Magdalena Frauenberg
Athene
2023

The sculpture Athene is a collage of reworked 3D scans of various other sculptures: Donatello’s David, Auguste Rodin’s The Kiss, and the head of a Catholic relic whose author is unknown. The figure is wearing the Heart of the Ocean necklace made famous by the film Titanic. In the film, the necklace becomes a symbol of the female protagonist’s oppression. The work was born out of the observation that the advent of 3D scanning is paving the way for the accurate archiving of three-dimensional cultural objects. The access granted by various institutions to the archives of art history enables us to be empowered by a contemporary perspective on history. We are given access to the past and the ability to download and change it at the same time. The democratized handling of information makes it possible to endlessly sample and rework art history—thus raising the question of authorship in art.