Ramesch Daha elected as new president

The general assembly of the Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession elected a new board on October 4, 2021. Under its president Ramesch Daha, the board composed of Ricarda Denzer, Lone Haugaard Madsen, Barbara Kapusta, Wilfried Kühn, Ulrike Müller, Nick Oberthaler, Michael Part, Lisl Ponger, Axel Stockburger, Sophie Thun, Anna Witt, and Jun Yang will lead the Secession in the coming years.

The Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession is the world’s oldest extant independent exhibition venue expressly dedicated to contemporary art that has been led by artists throughout its history. In keeping with the motto emblazoned on its façade, “To each era its art. To art its freedom,” it mounts between 10 and 15 solo exhibitions and thematically focused presentations a year, showcasing the forms of creative expression that are relevant today.

Ramesch Daha outlines the goals of her new board:

“Working as a team, we will continue to develop an international contemporary exhibition program that recognizes the lived diversity of artistic approaches as well as the complex realities of contemporary life and today’s global challenges. The new board envisions the Secession as a locus of social dialogue where hot-button cultural, societal, and political issues are negotiated. In this connection, we will also engage in a critical review of our own role, the privileges associated with it, and the Secession’s history. Our fundamental goal is to keep reducing barriers of access to the Secession, both for members and, more importantly, for the public: we want to bring in new audiences and integrate people’s differing ranges of experience and biographical backgrounds. Specifically, we plan to roll out an art education program that emphasizes outreach, engagement, and accessibility and expands the range of digital formats. Another objective that is important to us is to effect a lasting improvement of the Secession’s ecological footprint.”

Ramesch Daha succeeds Herwig Kempinger, who did not stand for reelection after eight years and four terms in office:

“We would like to use this opportunity to express our gratitude to Herwig Kempinger and the departing members of the board. Thanks to their unfailing dedication to the Secession, we are taking the helm of an institution that is in excellent shape.”

Biographical notes

Ramesch Daha (b. 1971, Tehran, Iran) lives in Vienna since 1978. Working in a wide range of media, Daha examines the disappearance of narratives and objects in moments of historic disruption, as well as family (hi)stories as reflections of larger social developments. Basing her work on extensive research, she compiles multifaceted collections of materials that endow the act of recollection with a novel physical quality. Recent exhibitions include KINDL, Berlin (2020); Index Foundation, Stockholm (2020); KUVA—Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki (2019); Konstfack, Stockholm (2019); 5th D-0 ARK Underground Biennial, Konjic, Bosnia and Herzegovina (2019); B7L9, Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Tunis (2019); Jüdisches Museum Augsburg (2018) and ACF, New York (2017).

Ricarda Denzer (b. 1967, Kirn, Germany) works at the interface between diverse artistic disciplines. Her transmedia works—audiovisual research spaces—interweave video, writing, photography, audio plays, drawings, objects, installations, and editorial and curatorial work. Recent solo exhibitions at Kunstraum Lakeside, Klagenfurt (2019) and Neue Galerie Innsbruck (2018). Denzer has taught at the University of Applied Arts Vienna since 2013.

Lone Haugaard Madsen (b. 1974, Silkeborg, Denmark). Her sprawling installations form part of an unending cycle of artistic production/reproduction and presentation/representation. Selected solo exhibitions include Haubrok Foundation, Berlin (2021); Kunstraum Lakeside, Klagenfurt (2021); NAK Aachen (2013); Overgaden, Copenhagen (2011) and Secession, Vienna (2006).

Barbara Kapusta (b. 1983, Vienna) is interested in time-based digital media, queer feminist theory and poetry. Her works are articulations of situated bodies, partial perspectives and queer agency as they question the imperial gesture of universality and binary structuring. Exhibitions include mumok, Vienna (2021); Halle für Kunst Steiermark, Graz (2021); ACF London (2020); Kunstraum London (2019); Kunsthalle Wien (2019) and Ashley Berlin (2018).

Wilfried Kuehn (b. 1967) is a partner in the architectural practice Kuehn Malvezzi, Berlin and a curator and writer. He has taught spatial design at TU Wien, Vienna, since 2018. Kuehn Malvezzi’s work has been presented in various international exhibitions, including the 10th, 13th, and 14th Venice Architecture Biennials and the 1st and 2nd Chicago Architecture Biennials.

Ulrike Müller (b. 1971, Brixlegg, Austria) lives in New York. Müller’s work mobilizes vocabularies of color and shape that are politically and emotionally charged and encourage figurative readings. Müller teaches painting at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. Exhibitions include mumok, Vienna (2015); Whitney Biennial, New York (2017); 57th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2018); Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2018) and the 58th Venice Biennale (2019).

Nick Oberthaler (b. 1981, Bad Ischl). Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and HEAD Genève and a-i-r at WIELS, Center for Contemporary Art, Brussels (2011). With Nadine Droste, he co-curated the exhibition space VIS, Hamburg (2018–19); Selected exhibitions at KIOSK, Ghent; Museo Andersen, Rome; Institut d’Art Contemporain, Villeurbanne and Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Since 2020 professor of painting at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Lyon.

Michael Part (b. 1979, Vienna). Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Städelschule - Hochschule für bildende Künste, Frankfurt am Main. Selected solo exhibitions include Trottoir, London; Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster; mumok Kino, Vienna; Kunsthaus Bregenz (with Florian Pumhösl); Pro Choice, Vienna and Sotoso, Brussels. 

Lisl Ponger (b. 1947, Nuremberg, Germany). Operating at the interfaces of art, art history, and technology, her work employs the media of photography, film installation, and writing to address stereotypes, racisms, and constructions of the gaze. Ponger trained in the photography class at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt, Vienna. Solo exhibitions include Kunsthaus Dresden (2019); MdM, Salzburg (2018–19); Weltmuseum Wien (2017–19); Kirchnermuseum, Davos (2014) and Secession, Vienna (2014).

Axel Stockburger is an artist and associate professor in the art and digital media class at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. He received a PhD from the University of the Arts, London, for a study on the spatial structures of digital games. In his work as an artist and theorist, he insistently probes the paradigm shift precipitated by a media-driven globalization. He is a member of the research platform Technopolitics.

Sophie Thun (b. 1985) lives in Vienna and works with techniques of analog photography, its times, spaces, and processes, its conditions of production and presentation. Recent solo exhibitions at Kim?, Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga (2021); Secession, Vienna (2020) and C/O Berlin (2020).

Anna Witt (b. 1981, Wasserburg am Inn, Germany). Her work encompasses performances, videos, and installations. Witt creates situations that reflect on social relations and power differentials as well as the conventions governing speech and action. She has participated in biennials including the 19th Aichi Triennale, Japan; the LUX/ICA Biennial of Moving Images, London; the 6th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art and Manifesta 7.

Jun Yang (b. 1975, China) immigrated to Austria with his family in 1979; he now lives in Vienna; Taipei, Taiwan; and Yokohama, Japan. Yang has participated in numerous biennials, including Sydney, Gwangju, Taipei, Liverpool, and Venice aswell as Manifesta 4 in Frankfurt. A major solo exhibition was shown at Kunsthaus Graz in 2019.

For more information, press materials, and photographs, please contact:

Julia Kronberger
Secession, Vereinigung Bildender KünstlerInnen Wiener Secession
Friedrichstraße 12, 1010 Wien
T +43-1-5875307-10 / F +43-1-5875307-34 / presse [​at​] secession.at

Current exhibitions:
Danh Vo
Carlos Bunga: Mind awake, body asleep
Rana Hamadeh: Standard_Deviation
September 17–November 7, 2021

The exhibition program is conceived by the board of the Secession.