Situation Anophthalamus Hitler

Anophthalmus hitleri is conceived as a performative collaboration between Jasmina Cibic and over forty scientific entomological illustrators. The project traces a case of taxonomical naming attached to an endemic Slovene cave beetle—most numerous in the cave Pekel (Hell)—which was named in 1937 by the entomologist Oskar Scheibel, a sympathiser of Adolf Hitler. Fixed within the conventions of Linnaean classification, the species remains bound to a politically charged designation that cannot be amended, its name rendering it a target for neo-Nazi memorabilia collectors—paradoxically threatening its survival through the very condition that defines it.

The installation comprises a collection of over forty drawings and paintings produced in collaboration with illustrators and scientists affiliated with international institutions. Each contributor was instructed to depict the insect without consulting any existing visual or written description. Drawing solely from disciplinary knowledge and the implications of its Latin name, these images operate between scientific authority and projection. What emerges is not a scientific record but an accumulation of speculative forms—an “encyclopaedic” series that displaces observation with interpretation and reveals the instability of representation itself.

Cibic’s use of delegated authorship situates the project within her broader strategy of working through existing systems—here, those of science, taxonomy, and illustration—by inhabiting and subtly misdirecting their protocols. The beetle becomes a site where the logic of genus, specimen, and nation collapses into one another: a rare species, a national anomaly, and a representational burden.

At stake is the political economy of the name itself. As theorists of language and ideology have long argued, naming is never neutral but constitutes a symbolic contract that binds subjects within systems of meaning and power. In this case, the persistence of the name Anophthalmus hitleri exposes the limits of scientific objectivity: while taxonomy claims universality, it remains governed by rules that privilege continuity over ethical or political reconsideration. The inability to rename the species foregrounds a paradox—how to reconcile the survival of a biological entity with the erasure or preservation of its ideological trace.

By staging the beetle as an impossible emblem, Cibic extends her ongoing investigation into the mechanisms of national representation. Much like the selection of artworks or symbols to stand in for a nation, the Slovene endemic beetle becomes an “unfit” icon—one that cannot be assimilated into narratives of pride or identity, yet cannot be removed. Through this tension, the project reveals how systems of display—whether scientific, cultural, or political—produce meaning through acts of selection, exclusion, and framing. The installation thus operates as both image and apparatus: a choreography of representations that directs the viewer’s gaze while exposing the ideological structures that condition it.

The artist expanded the project into her solo exhibition For Our Economy and Culture, the Slovenian pavilion at 55th Venice Biennial.