Event Details
Appearing like a film set under construction, Transplant Shock is an installation by Biljana Popovic that considers relationships between architecture, environment, and culture. It was developed in response to Juliet Carpenter’s film Heaven’s Blade—which Popovic worked on as a production designer—set in a speculative world where the sun has become too intense for people to safely inhabit the outdoors.
The title comes from a term for the temporary stress a plant experiences when it is uprooted and replanted in a new environment. A partially built facade made from salvaged window frames and timber echoes the building styles and materials 19th-century settlers brought to the southern hemisphere—designs made for another climate. Just as skin burns and blisters in the harsh sunlight, so too do painted wooden buildings, which “sunburn” in the New Zealand weather.
Biljana Popovic (b. 1990, Loznica, Serbia) is an artist and spatial designer who lives and works in Melbourne. She is particularly interested in exploring themes of migration, displacement and belonging. Popovic graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts with a BFA Hons in 2012 and was the recipient of the Creative New Zealand Berlin Artist Residency 2018–2019. She has exhibited her work and designed exhibitions nationally and internationally.