Having exhausted her options as the leading Eastern European female collage artist – an accolade which quickly leads to type-casting – Kot’átková has turned to collaging the world’s story in 3D.  Her lament of the giraffe Lenka, who died after only a brief spell in the Prague zoo in the 1950s, is a cross between a children’s adventure park and a biology lesson taken by a substitute history teacher. Lenka’s innards are rendered in plush pink and red cushions and her cardiovascular system is one with the building’s plumbing.

So far, so amusing, and so open for the imagination. Lenka would make a powerful symbol of the costs of the friendship of nations and the impressive, though stunted stature of the Czechoslovak dream. 

Alas, Kot’átková desperately needed this giraffe to broaden her future career prospects. To this end, the animal’s soft guts were deftly co-branded in the exhibition by a group calling itself Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures who boasts “links to indigenous peoples” of Canada but no expertise in zoology. In her short life, Lenka was a victim of a safari and an ideological stunt. Her taxidermied corpse is now host to another.