About the works and artist bios

ELISA ANDESSNER

 

FRAUEN*ZIMMERSCHIESSEN (SHOOTING WOMEN*), name it /

count it / end it,

 

2024-2025

part of a 13-part series.

 

„These images of women on shooting targets are deeply rooted in historical gender roles: men appear as active, combative subjects, while women are portrayed as passive objects of admiration or as “decorations” for the scene. This visual language reflects patriarchal power relations and continues to shape the collective visual memory to this day. The shooting target as an object thus embodies not only a piece of sports equipment, but also a cultural cipher in which social power structures manifest themselves.’’

 

TREFF ICH DICH INS HERZ

 

2025

video, loop

concept, performance, artistic realisation: Elisa Andessner

direction, editing: Alenka Maly

camera: Roland Freinschlag

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BIO

Elisa Andessner (born in 1983) works in various artistic fields like photography, video art and graphics. The starting point of her works is the thingness of her own body and the corporeity of things. Since 2012 she works on the photo series „Surrender to spaces“, for which Andessner puts her body in relation to existing spacial situations and captures these staged moments by means of self timer photography. The basis of these series is the intense work in the fiel of performance art from 2006 to 2013. A further part of her work is the organisation and the curating of international art projects and exhibitions.

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IRIS ANDRASCHEK 

 

Everybody supports women. Until they are doing better than you.

 

2025

c-print on aluminium, eyelets

74,5 x 49,5 cm

Courtesy of GALERIE 3

 

„The artist deals with personal, culturally influenced and political, socio-economic boundaries, as well as people’s attempts to counteract the dualisticand rigid understanding of boundaries through the constant reactivation ofseemingly normative rules and the development of alternative ways of life. She often portrays people who have freed themselves from conventional patternsof thought and imagination and reject externally imposed systems by refusing to accept them and instead anchoring their existence in a conscious life with nature. Beyond clichés and idylls, Andraschek deals with interpersonal processes and networks of relationships and the boundaries between reality and fiction in images constructed by the media.“

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BIO

Iris Andraschek was born in Horn (AT) and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (AT).

Her works have been shown at national and international exhibitions, including Kunsthalle Göppingen (DE), Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz (AT), parallel event of the 16th Istanbul Biennial, Büyük Valide Han and Austrian Cultural Forum Istanbul (TR), Zeta Art Center & Gallery, Tirana (AL), Museum Moderner Kunst Klagenfurt (AT), Kunsthaus Wien (AT), LP Art Space, Organhaus, Chongqing (CN), Fotohof Salzburg (AT), Salzburger Kunstverein (AT), Museum der Moderne Salzburg (AT), Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (MX), Exit Art Museum, New York City (USA), Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago (US), Galeria de Artes Visuales, H10, Valparaíso (CL), National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (JP), Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (GB), Albertina, Vienna (AT).  Andraschek has taught as a visiting professor and lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (AT) and the University of Art and Design Linz (AT). From 1997 to 2000 she was a member of the artistic advisory board for Art in Public Space of the State of Lower Austria (AT).

She herself has realised many art projects in public space, including Freiburg (DE), Munich (DE), Stuttgart (DE), Krems (AT), Vienna (AT), Salzburg (AT), Graz (AT), Loosdorf (AT) and St. Pölten (AT).

Andraschek has received several national and international awards, including in 2014 at the Prix d’Intégration de Sculpture monumentale à l’Urbanisme, Liège (BE) for her project Tell these people who I am, in 2015 the Austrian Art Award for Fine Arts and in 2018 the City of Vienna (AT) Award for Fine Arts.

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SIMONA ANDRIOLETTI

 

A Litany for Survival

 

2025

26:57 min

4K / 16:9

stereo sound

Courtesy the artist and Ribot Gallery

 

In “A Litany for Survival”, Simona Andrioletti brings protest singing and feminism into dialogue with the monumental architecture of fascism. Five FLINTA* musicians reinterpret songs from the album “Canti delle donne in lotta” (Rome, 1975), performing in front of or within buildings that once symbolized totalitarian power in Rome, Berlin, and Munich. The contrast between the monumental nature of these spaces and the emotional power of the voices creates a striking tension: architecture, designed to impose itself visually and ideologically, is silenced by the sound and meaning of the songs. The performers – Lucrezia, Mavi Phoenix, Francamente, Fitza, and Gündalein – each reinterpret a track from the original album, blending singing, rap, and personal expressive styles. Their lyrics address feminist themes, patriarchy, and systemic injustice, powerfully demanding equality in places once used to celebrate authoritarian dominance. Through music, the artists symbolically reoccupy these spaces, subverting their original meaning. With this video work, Andrioletti highlights the political power of voice and collective singing as tools of emancipation and resistance. She makes this explicit at the end of the video: “Because by singing, we multiply voices.”

 

Text me when you get home

 

2024

100% Merino wool certified as mulesing-free and RWS by ICEA (Ethical and environmental Certification Institute), aluminium structure

variable dimensions

Courtesy the artist and Ribot Gallery

 

Text me when you get home is a series of merino wool blankets created by the artist in a wool mill in Southern Italy. Each blanket is jacquard-woven with phrases addressing themes of traumas, mental health, and gender-based violence. The series, composed of twelve pieces — three of which are exhibited in this show — spans a timeline from Greek mythology to the present day, referencing well-known instances of sexual violence in history, such as the myth of Apollo and Daphne. The most recent piece depicts the demonstrations in Bologna, where thousands of people have joined protests across Italy since 2015 against femicide, under the slogan Non una di meno ("Not One Less"). The grey piece pays tribute to Maria Schneider, depicting her curls, eyebrows, and nose during the infamous butter scene in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1972 film Last Tango in Paris. In this scene, Schneider is humiliated and abused by Marlon Brando, a moment that has become a symbol in the ongoing debate about consent in cinema and the representation of violence against women on the big screen. The visual language of the blankets recalls the aesthetic of fanzines and protest posters: like flyers or self-published materials, these objects are designed to communicate messages with urgency and immediacy. While the texts may be disturbing or uncomfortable, the softness of the wool offers the viewer a temporary sense of refuge.

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BIO

Simona Andrioletti (Bergamo, 1990) lives and works in Munich and Milan.

Simona Andrioletti’s artistic practice is rooted in a research-based approach and unfolds through a critical and active exploration of social and institutional structures. Through immersive installations, the artist investigates complex dynamics related to socio-political activism, systemic violence, and psychological defense mechanisms. Her work reflects on the conditions of disadvantage experienced by minority groups, as well as on moments of solidarity that enable marginalized communities to support one another and build resilient networks. She is interested in issues related to gender-based violence from an intersectional perspective, taking into account the interplay of multiple identities and the structural biases that affect marginalized subjectivities in different ways, particularly within the FLINTA community. Language, writing, music, and immersive environments are central elements of her practice, which often adopts a militant tone and embraces forms of active participation. Simona Andrioletti’s work has been exhibited in Art Institutions and galleries such as Kunsthalle Mannheim; Kunstverein Munich, Federkiel Stiftung, Nir Altman Galerie, Villa Stuck in Munich; MACRO in Rome; Museo del Novecento in Florence; Réféctoire des Nonnes in Lyon and Careof in Milan.

 

 

 

 

SUZANNE ANKER

 

When Crystals Spawn Flowers

 

2024 

layered photographic compositions with embedded embryo imagery & 3D-printed resin sculptures of cryogenically preserved embryos 

 

The work was commissioned by Natalia Marin and Jodi Moise for the exhibition A(I) Brighter Tomorrow: Cancer and Beyond, presented in collaboration with The Fine Art Program and Collection at Montefiore Einstein, and on view at the Gallery of ARTFul Medicine from January 24 to April 18, 2025. IVF: When Crystals Spawn Flowers was developed under the guidance of Sangita Jindal and Heather Feil at Montefiore's Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Health, where Suzanne Anker visited an embryology lab and observed early-stage embryos–the foundational inspiration for the work.  

 

In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is a form of assisted reproductive technology, a fusion of medical advancements that allow for the fertilisation of an egg outside a woman’s body. This process involves a delicate balance of medication and surgical intervention, using stored sperm to fertilise the egg. The resulting embryos are preserved in cryogenic tanks, awaiting the moment they can be implanted into the uterus to begin their journey of life. IVF serves as a vital tool for women who face obstacles to natural conception. Whether due to age, medical conditions, or the necessity of treatments like chemotherapy, IVF offers a chance for many to realise their dreams of becoming mothers. For example, women with cancer often face the heartbreaking dilemma of needing radiation or chemotherapy to save their lives, which can, unfortunately, compromise their fertility. In these cases, IVF becomes a lifeline. Eggs are extracted from the ovaries, frozen, and 

preserved until they are ready to be re-implanted as embryos, giving these women the hope of future motherhood despite the challenges they face. It’s a technology that extends beyond medical necessity; even public figures like Michelle and Barack Obama turned to 

IVF to conceive their daughters.   

 

The story of IVF can be seen as a powerful metaphor for life emerging after a long, cold winter. Like perennial plants that lie dormant under a blanket of frost, only to awaken when spring arrives, the frozen embryos, once “sleeping” in cryogenic preservation, are brought back to life. After chemotherapy or other treatments, these embryos are “reawakened” and implanted into the uterus, beginning their own cycle of growth and development. It is, in many ways, a resurrection—a return of life, a second chance. This collection of photographs draws on the metaphor of rebirth after frost, using it as a poetic lens through which to view the IVF process. The images capture the delicate beauty of ice crystals, symbolising the preservation and eventual revival of life through this technique. The sculptures in the series mirror the intricate patterns of crystallisation, further emphasising the fragile yet profound nature of this technology. IVF, like nature itself, holds the power to bring life back from the frozen stillness, offering hope, transformation, and the promise of a new beginning.

 

BIO
Suzanne Anker is a visual artist and theorist working at the intersection of art and the biological sciences. Her practice investigates the ways in which nature is being altered in the 21st century. Concerned with genetics, climate change, species extinction and toxic degradation, she calls attention to the beauty of life and the “necessity for enlightened thinking about nature’s ‘tangled bank’.” Anker frequently works with “pre-defined and found materials” botanical specimens, medical museum artifacts, laboratory apparatus, microscopic images and geological specimens. She works in a variety of mediums ranging from digital sculpture and installation to large-scale photography to plants grown by LED lights.

Her work has been shown both nationally and internationally in museums and galleries including the Beijing Art and Technology Biennale at CUBE, China; the Wuhan Biennale, China; the Anyang Public Art Project, Korea; the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Daejeon Biennale, Korea; ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.; the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; P.S.1 Museum, New York, NY; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; the Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité, Berlin, Germany; the Center for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin, Germany; the Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey; the Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan; and the International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. Anker’s exhibitions have been the subject of reviews and articles in the New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, and Nature.

 

 

 

 

STELLA BACH

 

EVERYBODY’S PINK UNDER THE SKIN

 

2020

object case

60 x 40 x 30 cm

 

In EVERYBODY’S PINK UNDER THE SKIN, Stella Bach foregrounds thefundamental biological equality of all human beings. By invoking what lies beneath the surface, the work dismantles socially constructed categories such as gender, skin colour, religious belief, sexual orientation, and origin, revealing them as systems of difference imposed upon a shared corporeal reality.

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BIO

Born 1959 in Salzburg. Lives and works in Vienna. 1979 – 1984 studied art at the University of applied arts in Vienna. Teaches design and grafics in Fashion School Vienna since 1990. Stella Bach‘s multi faceted work evolves around the relationship and disruption between body and mind, voice and meaning, inside and outside. Her paintings, collages, photographs and sculptures create a highly associative visual semantic that discloses a lyrical sociology of inner states and external restraints. She transcends states of mind in her overpainted collages, which emerge from an introspective process to then be manifested into gesture and material form. Scolarship for photography in Rome 2006. She is represented in several public and private collections. Numerous national and international exhibitions.

 

 

 

LILIANA BASARAB

 

Rosa Dentata

 

2022

glazed stoneware, rose thorns

10 x 12 x 5 cm each

 

Rosa Dentata confronts feminist themes unsettling inherited symbols of femininity.

Drawing on the myth of vagina dentata, a body imagined as dangerous, capable of resisting male violence, the series transforms the rose, long associated with shame, virginity, and loss. In these ceramic roses, the thorns turn inward. What was meant to wound becomes a defence. Carefully modelled and glazed, the flowers reclaim vulnerability as power, asserting a quiet and radical refusal of domination, abuse, and violation.

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BIO

Liliana Basarab (b. 1979) is a visual artist professionally active in Bucharest, who began her career in Iași in the early 2000s. Her artistic practice is socially engaged, and the media she works with include performance, sculpture, drawing, participatory workshops, and video.

Exhibitions (selection): Talent Is Not Democratic, Art Is Not a Luxury, Borderline Art Space, Iași (2016, solo); Girls with Ideas [Boys and Paintings], Lateral ArtSpace, Cluj-Napoca (2016); In Times of Hope and Anxiety. Critical Art from Iași, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest (2015, with Bogdan Pălie); Vaasa 20X0, Vaasa (2015, with Tuomo Väänänen); LUCK / Do I Feel Lucky? Do Ya, Punk?, Galeria Glosna, Poznań (2012, solo); Truth/s, Galeria apARTE, Iași (2011, solo); Truth/s’, DVAC, Dayton Visual Art Centre, Dayton, Ohio (2011, solo); Accidents, Mutations and Mistakes, Galeria MORA, Bucharest (2010, solo).

 

 

 

 

RENATE BERTLMANN 

 

Mo(u)rning 5

 

2011

digital print mounted on dibond

50 x 50 cm

courtesy galerie steinek

 

„The radical Austrian artist Renate Bertlmann has been active since the 1970s. For the past fifty years, she has focused on issues of love, sexuality, gender and eroticism, often using her own body as a medium. Bertlmann’s diverse practice spans painting, drawing, collage, photography, sculpture and performance. Her work actively confronts the social stereotypes assigned to masculine and feminine behaviours and relationships.“

 

BIO

Renate Bertlmann (*1943, lives and works in Vienna) studied painting, conservation and technology at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna from 1964 to 1970. After completing her studies, a teaching position followed at the same institution in artistic techniques.

 

In her works Renate Bertlmann deals with role and body images. She provocatively and ironically questions gender contexts by discussing topics such as pornography, sexuality, violence and Eros. Her diverse practice spans painting, drawing, collage, photography, sculpture, performance and text. She first proclaimed her artistic maxim AMO ERGO SUM (I love, therefore I am) in 1978, which later evolved into the trilogical publication AMO ERGO SUM with its three parts: Pornography, Irony and Utopia.

 

 

 

 

IRINA BOTEA BUCAN

 

Felicia Says

 

12' 54, HD

2008

 

Felicia 

 

14'42", HD 

2009

 

Felicia is a two-channel video installation based on the story told by a Romanian emigrant met in Paris on the banks of the Seine. The chance meeting and the conversation about homesickness for one’s own country and language were transformed into a tale of dramatic events from the protagonist’s life. In Felicia Says, the story comes from Felicia’s own lips. The powerful impression made by the central character’s account of herself and by her character as it emerged within the film’s structure led to the filming of the second part of the project, Felicia. 

This time, Felicia’s story is played by four male actors, Romanian emigrants like herself. What is of the essence is that they are all men, for whom the protagonist’s direct tough-talking presents a challenge. Felicia’s story touches upon an issue which is not only highly topical in numerous European countries but is particularly evident in Romania: intolerance toward the Romany minority. The piece confronts the viewer without giving a specific direction for interpretation. It provokes a series of questions about work, freedom, the ability to make choices, negotiation, the perception of human beings as commodities, fiction and reality, trust, identification with the protagonist or not, and the roles of aggressor and victim. How do we see her while hearing the story of poverty, prostitution and thievery? How do we connect with her? How would we interpret her?

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BIO

Irina Botea Bucan (b. Ploiesti, Romania) has developed a symbiotic artist-educator-gardener-researcher methodological framework that consistently questions dominant socio-political ideas and centralizes human and non-human agency as a vehicle for meaning. Choosing to act in diverse contexts, such as: academic institutions, alternative galleries, museums, art biennials, film festivals, gardens, community centres, and cultural houses; she is currently focusing on the de-centralization of cultural discourses and the possibility of sustaining creative differentiation that arguably exists outside of a dominant hegemonic system of values and critique. Since 2013 she has been collaborating with Jon Dean, and currently she is faculty at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and pursuing a PhD at Goldsmiths University in London titled “Unfinishing Cultural Houses”.
 

 

 

 

GETA BRĂTESCU

 

L’Atelier (The Studio, 1978)

 

Camera: Ion Grigorescu 

8 mm-film transferred onto DVD, 4:3, b./w., no sound, 17:45 min,

Courtesy of: family of the artist, Ivan Gallery, Bucharest 

 

“In 1978 I worked on the film L’Atelier (image by painter Ion Grigorescu, black and white, 8 mm). L’Atelier contains three parts: SLEEP, when the sleeping artist is integrated as an object among the objects of his studio; AWAKENING, when the artist draws on two planes at 45 degrees a square on each: one vertical and the other horizontal, according to the measure of his own height; in the space thus established, he tries—in vain—to follow the diagonal of the vertical square; then, in this space that bears his measure, he performs summary maneuvers with small wooden plates and a felt spiral. And finally PLAY, when the artist is among the objects in the studio and composes with their help a small performance; he pulls the collar of his shirt over the top of his head, becoming himself a puppet.” - Geta Brătescu

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BIO

b. 1926, Ploiești - d. 2018, Bucharest, Romania
 

Geta Brătescu has been a central figure of Romanian contemporary art since the 1960s. An artist with a rich and long career, Brătescu developed a complex body of work that comprises drawing, collage, engraving, tapestry, object, photography, experimental film, video, and performance. She studied at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy and concurrently at the Fine Arts Academy in Bucharest and worked as an artistic director for the magazine Secolul 20 [20th Century], renamed Secolul 21 at the turn of the millennium.

Geta Brătescu took part in some of the most important contemporary art exhibitions, such as Documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017), La Biennale di Venezia (2013), La Triennale, Paris, Palais de Tokyo (2012) and the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011), to name just a few. In 2017, Geta Brătescu represented Romania in the Venice Biennale with the project Apparitions, the first solo show of a woman artist in the Romanian Pavilion. Her most recent solo exhibitions were presented at Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (2020), Kunstforeningen GL Strand, Copenhagen (2021), Francisco Carolinum, Linz (2022), Kunstmuseum Ravensburg (2023).

Brătescu’s works are in important collections such as MoMA, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; MUMOK, Vienna; Kontakt Collection, Vienna; Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana; and FRAC Lorraine, Metz.

 

 

 

 

JULIA BUGRAM

 

Alles was du sehen willst... II (Everything You Want to See… II)

 

2021

pencil and fineliner on paper 

195 x 135 cm

 

Julia Bugram: „In my artistic practice, I process personal and collective memories – especially those that have shaped us women across generations: experiences of visibility and invisibility, of resistance and conformity, of attributions that were not self-chosen […] My work challenges the conventional gaze – the male gaze that has shaped our ideas of femininity, bodies and social

values for centuries. Instead, I seek new images, new narratives and new perspectives that give space to those viewpoints that have been systematically marginalised in patriarchal structures.“

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BIO

​Julia Bugram is an interdisciplinary artist working with graphics, installation and objects. She currently lives in Vienna, Austria.
In terms of content, she often moves at the interfaces between art and society. The various works and projects can be seen as visual commentaries on social developments or conditions and at the same time question them. Julia has experience in artistic project management and crowdfunding. Cross-disciplinary collaboration with other artists and experts from various fields is a feature of her approach to finding new ideas and solutions for her work.​​

 

 

CODRUȚA CERNEA

 

Endless

 

2021

oil on canvas, 

110 x 120 cm

 

The painting opens a space of reflection at the intersection of disappearance and continuity, between the succession of worlds and the role of the unconscious as an invisible force shaping our actions. The composition brings into juxtaposition and superimposition organic forms and planes of rigorous geometry that radically traverse the pictorial surface.

 

At the center of the work unfolds an apparently natural scene which, upon sustained viewing, reveals its carefully constructed character. It is a space of control and staging, projected against a background dominated by the presence of an oversized skeleton belonging to an extinct species, an echo and testimony to the worlds that came before us. There is a dialectical relationship between the visible and the hidden, between the surface and the sense of submersion, present in the lower plane of the work. The artificiality of the central scene may be seen as a meditation on the end of a world or species, mirrored by the disappearance evoked in the background.

 

As a counterbalance, the torso of a pregnant woman, the presence of a bird that seems to fly nostalgically toward the past, and the tender gesture of a hand resting on the cheek introduce the possibility of continuity and potential regeneration. They carry a sense of hope, suggesting that beyond disappearance, the promise of a new beginning remains perpetually open.

 

BIO
Codruța Cernea (b. 1979. in Târgu-Mureș, Romania) lives and works in Bucharest, Romania. 

Codruța Cernea uses painting as the ideal medium to exercise possibilities and to discover hidden aspects of her own existence. Her works have a profound meditative atmosphere, often capturing private moments that reflect the growing sense of solitude in contemporary human experience. Nostalgic scenarios of the future, individual experiences as subtle mirrors of collective transformations, landscapes and human nature with its contradictory emotional needs are some of the themes explored by the artist in her distinct and ever-changing pictorial universe. There is a fluid continuity in each of her series motivated by personal narratives and exploration of the extraordinary-normal world that is always surrounding us, both inside and outside. She builds strange and mysterious realms, with symbolically charged elements and views from timeless spaces, where humans live symbiotically with their natural environment or in a constant longing for it.

 

 

 

 

SEVDA CHKOUTOVA 

 

Tage_Wechsel _79, 81, 82, 86

 

2025

ink on paper

29 x 21 cm each

 

‘Her large-format works are characterised by a virtuoso mastery of the techniques of graphite and charcoal drawing. Finely elaborated, detailed, small-scale drawings sometimes cover the works on paper as irritating, almost comic-like details. Thematically, Chkoutova moves in her family environment but also between tabooed sexuality and disturbing dreams and experiences of her own childhood.’

 

BIO

Born in 1978 in Sofia, Bulgaria, Sevda Chkoutova lives and works in Vienna. She studied at the High School of Applied Arts in Sofia (1991–1996), followed by studies in Art History at New Bulgarian University in Sofia (1996–1997) and at the University of Vienna (1997–1998). From 1998 to 2002, she pursued Fine Arts with a focus on Contextual Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, studying under Sue Williams and the artist duo Muntean/Rosenblum. In 2004–2005, the artist was in residence in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Her work has been recognized through numerous awards and nominations. In 2006, they received the Art Award from Strabag Kunstforum, Vienna. Chkoutova was repeatedly nominated for the Walter Koschatzky Prize (2007, 2009, 2011) at mumok, Vienna, and in 2011 was also nominated for the Kardinal König Art Prize in Salzburg. Further nominations include the 1st International Faber-Castell Award for Drawing at the Neues Museum in Nuremberg (2012) and the Women Art Award for Drawing in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany (2013). In 2021, the artist was awarded a State Scholarship for Visual Art by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport in Vienna.

 

 

 

 

KATHARINA CIBULKA 

 

The Solange Project

 

since 2018

mixed media

 

“As long as generations change but our struggles remain the same, I will be a feminist,” or “As long as women have to fight for the rights men have always had, I will be a feminist,” declares Katharina Cibulka. These and other statements are embroidered monumentally in pink thread onto construction-site netting. By appropriating the historically domestic technique of cross-stitch, widely used in private interiors around 1900, and relocating it into the public realm, Cibulka exposes persistent structures of gender inequality. Her ongoing Solange project, initiated in 2018, uses visibility, scale, and site specificity to critically address the status quo of women’s rights in contemporary society.

 

BIO
Katharina Cibulka lives in Innsbruck and works in Innsbruck and Vienna. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (art and digital media and performance art), the Vienna School of Artistic Photography and the New York Film Academy. Cibulka is co-founder of the women’s band telenovela and the artist group peek a corner.

Works as an artist, filmmaker, photographer and project developer & director for artistic and sustainable processes and since 2023 as a stage designer.

Her work has been shown at national and international exhibitions and film festivals, including Glucksman Gallery / Cork, Künstlerhaus / Vienna, St. Claude Gallery / New Orleans, Kunstverein / Bonn, Shedhalle / Zurich, Secession / Vienna, Neue Galerie / Innsbruck, Lidget Gallery / Budapest, Golden Thread Gallery / Belfast, Mestnagalerija / Ljubljana, Museum of Applied Arts / Belgrade as well as at the St. Petersburg Biennale 2006. Petersburg Biennial 2006, the International Student Triennial in Istanbul 2010, the 1st Rabat Biennial for Contemporary Art 2019 (female only) and in 2022 at the Vierzon Biennial, France.

 

 

 

 

ALEXANDRA CROITORU

 

Untitled (Bodybuilder I)

 

2003

print on photo rag satin, dibond, museum glass, framed

80 x 68 cm

 

Untitled (Prime Minister)

 

2004

print on photo rag satin, dibond, museum glass, framed

80 x 68 cm

Alexandra Croitoru’s double portraits blend cynical humor and deadpan formality, mimicking standard compositions for such images. In each example, the man is seated and looks away from the camera, while the artist stands behind him, touching his shoulder and staring into the lens. Croitoru’s stereotypically masculine companions here are Adrian Năstase, prime minister of Romania at the time this work was made (who was later tried and imprisoned for corruption), and a bodybuilder who trained at her local gym. Although her gestures and posture appear deferential, Croitoru’s gaze is defiant.

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BIO

Born 1975 in Bucharest, Romania. Lives and works in Bucharest.

Alexandra Croitoru accomplished her PhD from The National Academy of Arts, Bucharest, where she teaches since 2010. Together with Magda Radu, she founded the curatorial program Salonul de Proiecte, part of the exhibition cycle of the National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest, in 2010.

 

SIMONA DEACONESCU

 

DAUGHTERS

 

2019

video performance, 40 min

concept & choreography: Simona Deaconescu

music: MONOCUBE

visual composition: M. Kardinal

light design: Alexandros Raptis & Ionuț Cherana

production manager: Laura Trocan

performers: Georgeta Corca, Simona Dabija, Teodora Velescu

 

Created in a dreamlike atmosphere, the bodily world in “Daughters” focuses on the idea of urgency or the urge to act. Taking on an experimental approach on roller skating and using the rollers to create a visual effect of a slowly floating body that moves in two different speeds at the same time, the performance induces a state of tension in the psychic field. Augmented by the dark electronic music of Ukrainian composer Monocube, the movement is inspired by post-punk body rebellion, connecting the head bang, the sick groove and the action of shouting to fragments of memories from the performer's childhood.

 

The idea of a female body that belongs to a generation of mothers and grandmothers deeply influences our behaviour today and the way we perceive our body. “Daughters” is a type of nostalgic story from the future, created with a very instinctual approach, putting side by side idiosyncratic gestures and powerful postures. Dislocating the action from the gesture, the meaning from the intention and overlapping deeply personal text with random facts from recent history, the performance has a hallucinatory cinematic mood. Following a process of exploring how editing changes the meaning of an action on film, in “Daughters” the dance focuses on frames of movement that seem to be missing, traces of light that follow the trajectory of the body and stage actions that go into a time-lapse.

 

Enhancing the peculiar characteristic of the movement, the video conceived by German visual artist M. Kardinal through analog technology, deconstructs the shapes, allowing the images to become distorted and blurred, grasping the fragile moment as both a constitutive and generative element of the environment. “Daughters” zooms on the struggle to be heard as an individual in opposition to the idea of belonging. By putting the counter history above the big history, the performance rewires the timelines of past, future and present, through simple and minimal actions.

 

BIO

Working across genres and formats, Simona Deaconescu examines social constructs, at the border of fiction and objective reality, sometimes with irony and dark humor. Her work explores future scenarios of the body, creating spaces in which nature, history, and technology meet, and the notion of choreography extends beyond the human body.

 

Simona Deaconescu holds a BA and a MA in Choreography from The National University of Theatre and Film Bucharest and a BA in Film Directing from Media University Romania. In 2014, she founded Tangaj Collective, an organization that works with transdisciplinary artists and researchers. In 2015, she became the co-founder and artistic director of the Bucharest International Dance Film Festival.

 

Her creations include performances, installations, films, and video artworks. They were presented on conventional stages, in galleries, museums, and alternative spaces, reaching audiences in Europe, Canada, Africa, and the USA. In 2023 and 2024, she will present work in Romania, within several projects happening in connection with Timișoara European Capital of Culture, as well as in Poland, Austria, Bulgaria, Portugal, South Africa, Mexico, Canada, Sweden, and Hungary.

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ANDREEA GRIGORAȘ

 

Când cresc mare (When I grow up)

 

2024

polystyrene, metal reinforcement, fibreglass, acrylic resin, paint, and candy lacquer

65 x 240 x 50 cm

 

The work challenges conventional representations of the body and interpersonal relationships, creating an environment with meditative undertones as well as a personal narrative about loss and self-rediscovery—one that resonates with and is completed by the viewers’ own stories.

 

The phallic symbolism, associated for centuries with power, still survives, remains widespread, and forms part of the collective imagination. Here, it becomes the central element of an unconventional playground, conceived from a distinctly feminine perspective. Its playful recontextualization shifts the dominant role to those who now engage with the object in a subversive manner. At the same time, the swaying motion, the up-and-down dynamic, underscores and highlights the power relations present both in intimate relationships and in everyday human interactions.

 

Behind this playground stands a little girl with a critical attitude, defying the adult world and, in a way, her own growth, revealing her opinions and feelings with a sincerity and authenticity unique to children, who are allowed such candour. It blends a political statement with a sense of amusement, play, and autonomy.

 

The work’s core lies in transcending societal limitations by reclaiming power and freedom of expression. Girls confront restrictive gender norms and taboos surrounding the body and pleasure, which can hinder their ability to explore their own sexuality freely and safely. In this sense, the phrase “when I grow up” becomes not just a promise, but a challenge: a call to face the obstacles and prejudices ahead and to assert themselves authentically.

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Bust

 

2025

brass

16 x 35 x 8 cm

 

The work begins from a straightforward, almost playful premise: a word game anchored in the double meaning of “bust.” Cast from the artist’s own torso, the piece mimics the familiar format of the commemorative male busts commonly encountered in public parks, monuments to authority, legacy, and historical significance. 

Yet, when the subject is a woman, the term “bust” carries an entirely different set of 

associations. Rather than evoking the image of an honoured public figure, it more readily brings to mind the female chest, reducing the body to a sexualized fragment. By using her own body as material, the artist exposes this linguistic and cultural bias, revealing how women are often denied the neutral monumental status automatically afforded to men. 

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BIO

Andreea Grigoraș (b. 2000, Romania) completed both her bachelor’s and master’s studies in the Sculpture Department at the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca, the city where she is currently active. Her artistic practice is grounded in distinct processes of introspection and conceptualization of her own lived experiences. The subjects she explores include sexuality, femininity, purity, and the power dynamics present in relationships. Her approaches are playful, exploring mixed techniques.

 

LĂCRĂ GROZĂVESCU

 

Time speaking through my needle 

 

Untitled I

We shall overcome

Mom's scissors

Biology is not faith

 

2024

embroidery on fine art print hahnemühle 

Museum Etching 350gsm, framed, museum glass

20 X 30 cm

‘‘For me, photography is not just an image, but a form of listening. Time Speaking Through My Needle was born from the time spent with family photographs that appear static yet carry within them tensions, longings, and inherited traumas. I first scanned these images from the family archive, printed them on museum-quality fine art paper, and embroidered directly onto them.

 

The thread I use is not decorative; it is a gesture passed down from my mother and grandmother, who sewed both to survive and to express themselves. For me, embroidery is a way of touching memory—slow, intimate, and caring. It is my way of responding to what was left unsaid, of asking questions where words can no longer reach.

 

The embroidered texts are sometimes inspired by the language of protest or by feminist artistic practices. They create a tension between the fragility of the image and the strength of the gesture, between the domestic sphere and the political voice. I am drawn to this very friction, where tenderness meets resistance.

 

This year, I decided to return to the project and give it a new dimension and scale through an installation that amplifies the presence of these works and opens them to a more immersive experience.

 

My works speak about maternal love in all its complexity, about the ways in which women transmit memory without words. I ask myself: what can be healed when we touch what has been hidden? And what happens when we dare to speak through gesture?’’ - Lăcră Grozăvescu

 

BIO
Lăcră Grozăvescu (b. 1996, Romania) is a visual artist whose practice engages with photography, embroidery, video, and installation. Her work explores themes of inherited silence, family trauma, and the fragmentary nature of memory, often rooted in domestic and autobiographical spaces. 

 

Working primarily with image and thread, Lăcră constructs intimate visual narratives that draw from her own family archive, blending documentary and conceptual approaches. Her ongoing series Time Speaking Through My Needle uses embroidery as an emotional gesture to intervene in family photographs, stitching into absence, silence, and unresolved grief.

 

Her works have been exhibited internationally in Italy, the United Kingdom, Greece, Japan, and the United States, and she has participated in portfolio reviews and mentorships in the Netherlands and Romania. She was recently selected as a Fresh Eyes 2025 Talent by GUP Magazine, and featured in Fisheye Magazine, Lenscratch, and L'oeil de la photographie.

 

Lăcră holds an MA in Photography and Dynamic Image from the National University of Arts Bucharest and a BA in Foreign Languages from the University of Bucharest. She currently lives and works in Bucharest.

 

 

MARKUS HANAKAM & ROSWITHA SCHULLER

 

A Group of LGBTQIA+ People

 

2023

33 x 30 cm

AI-generated digital photograph

courtesy Galerie Krinzinger

 

„Since 2014, Hanakam & Schuller have been working on the METIERS series of works – the duo takes repro photographs from various auction catalogs as the starting point for a series of pictorial works, the motifs are various stereotyped professional depictions, as almost every European porcelain manufactory has had in its program since the 18th century […] They are as much art objects as everyday objects or prototypical design objects. Hanakam & Schuller use their extensive archival research of such objects to have various image AIs create contemporary metiers in an analog style with dedicated work assignments. The exploration of the stereotyping of marginalized groups, their representational conventions and images of diversity is just as much a topic as the apparent „threat“ to professional groups from artificial intelligence. In a playful manner, the duo formulates questions about classism, salon culture, arts and crafts and everyday technology.“

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BIO

The artefacts created by Vienna-based artist duo Hanakam & Schuller are often shape-shifters, changing their external form and reappearing in different contexts. As artists and researchers, Markus Hanakam and Roswitha Schuller redefine the rules of visual art and construct idiosyncratic orders and new world designs in videos and objects. In doing so, they repeatedly work with applied art forms. Their works have been exhibited at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, the Eyebeam Centre for Art + Technology in New York, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Garage Museum of Contemporary Culture in Moscow, the MAK in Vienna, the MAK Centre for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles and the National Art Centre in Tokyo, among others.

 

 

 

FLORENTINA HOLZINGER

 

SANCTA

 

2024

50 x 33,3 cm

archival inkjet pigment print (giclee) on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Ultrasmooth 305g, 100% cotton, with Ultrachrome Pro inks, monted on alubond

photo by Matthias Baus

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Based on Paul Hindemith’s 1922 short work Sancta Susanna – in which a nun confronts the violent punishment of sexual self-determination – Florentina Holzinger’s SANCTA bridges Bach and Rachmaninoff with metal, noise and contemporary compositions to reclaim the gore of Catholic mass and address the violent history of the Church. Countering the religious discipline and punishment of (female*) sexuality – abortion, homosexuality, sex work, pleasure – SANCTA stages sexual sensations and practices as a pathway to not-only-religious ecstasy. In a quest for magic and transcendence, body artists twist the religious topoi of scarification, penetration, transformation; show magicians propose their take on the Bible’s miracles; the Sistine Chapel turns into a climbing wall, opera into rock musical, God into robot, Jesus Christ into Jesus Christ Superstar. Mass turns into spectacle and, in Florentina Holzinger’s words, real magic needs to happen. Spiderlike and dark, loud and excessive, funny and redemptory, SANCTA is the trigger warning for mass.

 

BIO

Florentina Holzinger, born 1986 in Vienna, is a choreographer, director and performance artist. She studied choreography at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam. Her diploma project, the solo performance Silk was awarded the Prix Jardin d‘Europe at ImpulsTanz Festival 2012. All her work deliberately play with the moving boudaries between high culture and entertainment and merge dance with elements of acrobatics, martial arts, stunts, splatter and sideshow. Together with with Vincent Riebeek Holzinger developed a trilogy of pieces that toured internationally: Kein Applaus für Scheiße, Spirit and Wellness. In 2015, they presented the follow-up Schönheitsabend - Tänze des Lasters, des Grauens und der Extase, their last collaboration for the time being. In autumn 2015, Holzinger’s second solo work Recovery, an experimental reflection of her recovery from a traumatic stage accident, had its premiere. The piece examines different forms of female representation and explores the full potential of female physicality. It was continued in a series of workshops on martial arts. Since 2017, Florentina Holzinger presented her works Apollon and TANZ. Eine sylphidische Träumerei in Stunts. The latter was invited to Theatertreffen 2020, got awarded “Production of the Year“ by Theater heute magazine, and won the NESTROY prize for best direction. In her work Étude for an Emergency at Münchner Kammerspiele in spring 2020, Florentina Holzinger and an ensemble of stuntwomen, opera singers and actors focused once more on the spectacle and disciplining of the female body. The next year, A Divine Comedy followed at the Ruhrtriennale and in 2022, her latest hit performance Ophelia’s Got Talent premiered at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. It was named “Production of the Year” by Theater heute and “Best Production” by TANZ magazine, got invited to Theatertreffen 2023 and was awarded two NESTROY prizes and the FAUST award for best dance performance.
 

 

 

EDGAR HONETSCHLÄGER

 

OMSCH II

 

2013/2017

digital film

11 minutes

extracts from the featured film OMSCH (2013)

 

The film tells the story of an artist and his neighbour, whom he affectionately calls ‘Omsch’. The two are separated by gender and an age difference of more than half a century, but they share a close friendship based on mutual respect. ‘Omsch’ presents a counterpoint to prevailing female age discrimination, depicting a self-determined old age independent of conventional ideas. The film depicts a tender relationship between a man and a woman that exists beyond family ties or sexual attraction.

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BIO

Edgar HONETSCHLÄGER (1963, Austria) is a visual artist and filmmaker based between Tarquinia and Vienna, but has spent time living in Japan, USA, Italy and Brazil. His work ranges from drawings, paintings, photography, installations and films. His debut feature film Milk (1997) was awarded an honorable mention at the Diagonale Grand Prize in 1998. It also screened at IFFR in 1999, and since, his films have appeared multiple times at IFFR including AUN – The Beginning and the End of All Things (2011) and Le formiche di Mida (2023). He also established the EDOKO Institute Film Production in Vienna to produce films and public art projects.

 

 

NONA INESCU

 

Lithopedic

 

2019 

archival print on Hahnemühle rag satin paper 

30 × 40 cm 

edition 2/3 available

courtesy of Catinca Tăbăcaru Gallery

 

Soft, big muscle 

 

2019

archival print on hahnemuehle rag satin paper 

30 × 40 cm 

edition 2/3 available

courtesy of Catinca Tăbăcaru Gallery

 

‘Would you like some cheese?’, asked Mary. / He shook his head. ‘You look very happy. Have you found something else?’ / Mary nodded eagerly and handed him another fossil she had cleaned. It was the round, knobbly kind. / ‘Tis one of them verterberries,’ she said. / Geoffrey looked puzzled till it dawned on him. ‘Oh, you mean vertebrae!’ / ‘That’s right, a verterberry.’ / Geoffrey looked at the fossil with more interest. ‘It can’t be,’ he said at last. / ‘Why not?’ She was angry at once. / ‘It’s much too big,’ he explained. (excerpt from “The Crocodile”, by John Tully) 

 

Nona Inescu’s proposal is ‘a natural history museum simulacrum’ dedicated to hybrid forms of past lives as seen from the future, an installation bringing together a series of new works specially created for LISTE. Easily recognizable museum elements - such as display mechanisms and stanchions - are subverted and thus become part of a fluid, hybrid body blurring the lines between the animal, vegetal, and mineral worlds.

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BIO

Lives and works between Athens, Greece and Bucharest, Romania.

She completed her studies in the summer of 2016 at the National University of Arts in Bucharest (Photography and Video Department) after studying at the Chelsea College of Art & Design in London (2009-2010) and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (2010-2011). Her artistic practice is interdisciplinary and includes photography, installation, sculptures, and video works. Based on a theoretical and literary perspective, the works focus on the relationship between the human body and the environment and the redefinition of this subject in a post-human key.  Concepts of geological time and our intense interrelation with our surroundings compose a primal contemporary togetherness aesthetic in an organic and biological techno-sphere.

 

 

AURORA KIRALY

 

HÉROÏNES

 

2013-2021

acrylic on paper, mounted on wooden cutting boards

10 pieces, variable dimensions

 

(Héroïnes, 2018_After Marilena Preda-Sânc_My Body is Space in Space, Time in Time and Memory of All, 1983-1985

 

- Héroïnes, 2018_After Pipilotti Rist_Ever Is Over All, 1997

 

- Héroïnes, 2015_After Sonia Delaunay. Couverture de Berceau, 1911​

 

- Héroïnes, 2020_After Sherrie Levine, Untitled (Presidential Collage 4), 1979

 

- Héroïnes, 2020_After Martha Rossler_Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975

 

- Héroïnes, 2015_After Francesca Woodman, “then at one point i did not need to translate the notes; they went directly to my hands,”, 1976

 

- Héroïnes, 2013_After Marina Abramovic_The Artist Is Present, performance, 2010

 

- Héroïnes, 2013_After Sarah Lucas_Au Naturel, 1994

 

- Héroïnes, 2013_After Claude Cahun_Untitled (Self-Portrait), ca. 1928

 

- Héroïnes, 2013_After Janine Antoni_Touch, video still, 2002)

 

The series entitled Héroïnes takes the works of important women artists and transfers them into paintings, regardless of their previous medium. Iconic art works are represented, but not by the means of photography (specific to documentation and art work reproduction) but by painting, like the copies made after art masters, only this time the copies are made after women artists.

 

An archive with a selection of works by women artists from modern and contemporary art history is made, with the aim to show a personal Top 10. Each different selection of ten does not represent a permanent and definitive choice. Other works are added later in this archive of sketches, as it is a project in progress. At the time when it is presented in an exhibition, the selection reflects the choice of that specific moment.

 

The title takes over the name of a literary text by artist Claude Cahun entitled Héroïnes (published in 1925), a series of monologues of key female figures in literature and history. The subtitles refer to the artistic endeavor made by Sherrie Levine, who is re-photographing famous works from the history of photography.

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BIO

Aurora Király (b. 1970, Brăila, Romania) lives and works in Bucharest, Romania Aurora Király is an artist working at the intersection of photography with drawing, textile art or installations, exploring how the mind records, relives, remembers. She is particularly interested in exploring feminist theories in relation with identity-making and the status of women in society. Her works relates to complex connections between events, public and private sphere of experience.  

 

Her latest works critically explore the place of women artists in art history and society, while also addressing themes of aging and the choreography of the female body in motion.  Her works are in important collections such as Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; The National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest; European Parliament's Contemporary Art Collection; as well as various private collections across Europe and North America.  

 

Between 2001-2008 Aurora Király ran one of the most significant art-spaces for photography in Romania, Galeria Nouă, and since 2007 she has been teaching at the Department of Photography and Dynamic Image, at the National University of Arts in Bucharest. Both roles have informed her artistic process focused on memory and the process of photography, actively supporting her peers and cultural workers in the emergent photography art scene in Romania through exhibitions, publications and artistic interventions. 


 

CLAUDIA LARCHER

 

AI and the Art of Historical Reinterpretation

Staatsvertrag 1955 

 

2022/2024

print

46 x 81 cm

 

Claudia Larcher: „The women in the illustration “Signing of the State Treaty,” as well as all other women in this project, were generated using AI and are fictional characters. They represent female equivalents of the historical group of men and are part of an alternative historical narrative. This artistic representation aims to encourage reflection on what would have happened if the Second Republic had not been ruled exclusively by men. It is about empowerment and questioning historical events from a gender-conscious perspective.“

BIO

Claudia Larcher is an artist, experimental filmmaker and AI researcher based in Vienna. Treating photography as a socially entangled, politically charged practice, she extends the still image through algorithmic animation, video, and immersive “phygital” installations. Her current research interrogates the materiality of data, ecological futures and bias‑aware artificial intelligence, contributing to international debates on digital humanism and post‑human image culture. 

Recent solo exhibitions: “Extinction Stories” at Recontemporary, Turin; “Hallucinations” at the Austrian Cultural Forum Prague (both 2025); “Hallucinations” at Engländerbau, Vaduz (2024); and “Still Lifes 3000” at BrahausS, Clervaux (2025).
Earlier exhibitions include “Show & Tell” at Anthology Film Archives, New York, and “Faux Terrain” at the Ars Electronica Festival, Linz. Her work has also featured in group shows such as “Rear Window & Real Wonder” and “Vienna Today – Activating Futures” at HOW Art Museum and The Hai Museum of Art, Shanghai, and “Imagine AI for Dignity” at NIROX, South Africa (all 2025), alongside
CIVA – Contemporary Immersive Virtual Art at Belvedere 21, Vienna (2024) and “Extensions of Self“ Francisco Carolinum Linz (2023).

 

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