On 17 January at 13:30, a tour of the exhibition “Neanderthal Beauty Clinic” will take place. The tour will be in English and conducted by the artist Madlen Hirtentreu. During the tour, visitors will learn about the concept of the exhibition, peek behind the scenes of how the works were created, meet the artist face to face, and reflect on how beauty can simultaneously be a means of survival, a tool for controlling the body, and a ritual of power.

“The Neanderthal Beauty Salon” is a speculative beauty installation created by Madlen Hirtentreu and Darja Popolitova. It explores how beauty procedures have become consumable fast goods and reveals how activities advertised as self-care can conceal mechanisms of bodily control and subjugation.

Hirtentreu and Popolitova’s installation functions as an aesthetic laboratory with an indeterminate temporal origin — half sanctuary, half clinic — where fictional medical and cosmetic objects intertwine, such as a nail-sucker, butt-shaker, gaze-amplifier, and body-starter, as well as animal-derived objects and materials like silver, charcoal, and stone. Together, they appear to be attempts at inventing yet another absurd beauty procedure that would ensure eternal youth for the body. Through the materials used, the artists highlight the invasive methods and nearly impossible standards employed to achieve beauty and youth.

Participation in the tour is included with an exhibition ticket. Free with a Museum Card.