The Donkey, the Artist, and the Necessary Ridiculous
In a world of art that takes itself terribly seriously, nora*c performs a gesture both poetic and disarming: she walks with a donkey among the artworks, watches it as it watches, lets it pause, breathe, simply be. The donkey is not an allegory nor a symbol: it is a living presence — gentle, humble, radically simple.
Alongside this presence comes a brief and uncanny video: one minute in which the donkey, to the notes of Ave Maria, appears to dance. It’s not choreography — it’s prayer. A secular, animal, unconscious yet powerful prayer. A gesture that doesn’t communicate but intercedes. It doesn’t speak, but invokes. And it’s in that moment that the work truly opens: when lightness becomes a sacred language, when the ridiculous touches grace.
The donkey doesn’t perform, doesn’t explain, doesn’t impress: it is. And in simply being, it reveals the absurdity — and beauty — of our relentless need to make sense of everything. It’s a rupture in the art system that idolizes concepts and authority. A test of tolerance for absurdity, slowness, nonsense.
As Milan Kundera wrote, “the need to take everything seriously is a form of barbarism.”
Here, irony is not sarcasm — it’s clarity. It is the necessary counter-shot to the academic gaze, the chance for art to become free again, breathable, unexpected.
This project doesn’t laugh at — it laughs with. With art, with the viewer, with life as it escapes every definition.
In the end, it’s all very simple:
sometimes, to understand art, all you need is a donkey.
