Milena Anna Bouma

The concept of mimesis or imitation of nature is inescapable in the works Milena Anna Bouma made at EKWC. A large set of tapering rooftiles inspired by fish scales – overlapping, protective, glistening with water – is clearly the older idea. Glow-in-the-dark rats and enlarged porcelain peanut already point towards genetic manipulation and human tinkering with life. The sculptures moulded from cartoonish dinosaur balloons push this line of thought still further. Dinosaurs have long disappeared, living only in popular imagination, and the airy image Bouma chose is millions of years removed from the fearsome eight-tonnes triceratops it suggests to portray. While lacking dinosaur DNA leaves scientists no hope of reviving the pre-historic creatures, they are very serious about other extinct species, like the woolly mammoth or the western black rhino. Endearing as Bouma’s dinos may be, they instil a profound sense of loss, and melancholy over our apparent inability to avert it.