Annual exhibition programme 2022

Stages of Grief
Entering the third year of the pandemic, Kunstraum Niederoesterreich strives to mitigate the wounds that the ongoing health crisis has left. Although more time still must pass before we can speak reflectively about the traumatic experiences and changes that the past two years have provoked in our society, it is already worthwhile to take a closer look at how we are dealing with this crisis. Therefore, Kunstraum Niederoesterreich rings in 2022 with Stages of Grief.

Not so much individual grief, but collective practices of mourning inform Dorota Gawęda’s and Eglė Kulbokaitė’s first institutional solo show in Austria, Oh, make your fingernails into spades, Your palms into shovels, which will open the exhibition programme in spring 2022. Departing from the new digital modes of life and work the pandemic has bestowed, the group exhibition LIMINAL SPACE RECORDS investigates the shifting definition of spatiality in relation to corporeality. Guest curator Frederike Sperling finds inspiration in Legacy Russell’s 2020 manifesto Glitch Feminism, a much-discussed, intersectionally rooted contribution on the potential of the glitch with regard to emancipatory practices. The annual programme of grief work is concluded with HIIIIIIIT, a duo exhibition by Stefan Panhans and Andrea Winkler. Drawing from the artists defiant aesthetic language, the exhibition project asks: How can we personally safeguard ourselves against the systemic crises of our times and what if it becomes a Sisyphus task?  

In 2022 Kunstraum Niederoesterreich will award the H13 Lower Austria Prize for Performance for the 16th time. The H13 is the only award for performance art in Austria and is endowed with 5000 EUR in prize money. The award-winning performance will be presented at Kunstraum on September 1, 2022 and will be accompanied by an exhibition that contextualizes the prize-winner’s work. For more information about the prize, application process, and the jury members, please visit here.

Complementing the exhibitions, Kunstraum Niederoesterreich also offers an intensive, multifaceted art mediation programme comprised of guided tours, workshops, and performances, which is available free of charge.

Oh, make your fingernails into spades, Your palms into shovels
March 1–May 14, 2022
Opening: Thursday, March 31, 2022

In keeping with the annual topic of Kunstraum Niederoesterreich’s programme, duo Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė focus on one specific quality of mourning: the significance of liminal periods. In their first institutional solo presentation in Austria, Gawęda and Kulbokaitė will present the Mouthless Part II video installation alongside a number of other works that investigate the passing from living to dead, from past to present to future and from nature to culture.

Artists: Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė
Curator: Katharina Brandl

LIMINAL SPACE RECORDS
June 4–July 30, 2022
Opening: June 3, 2022

Where the confines of the analogue become banalized by the digital, new poetic in-between spaces emerge, which have been settled and animated by hybrid (post-) identities. The exhibition LIMINAL SPACE RECORDS strives to deterritorialize spatiality and thus corporeality, and to explore it as a fluid and flexible formation. It invites Austria-based and international artists to performatively appropriate Kunstraum Niederoesterreich as a symbol of “spatial heaviness.”

Artists: Monika Grabuschnigg, Eva Papamargariti, Rowdy SS, amongst others

Guest Curator: Frederike Sperling

HIIIIIIIT
September 30–November 26, 2022
Opening: September 29, 2022

The workout regimen “HIIT,” an acronym for the fitness trend “high-intensity interval training,” promises explosive exercises that efficiently—maximum output in little time—deliver the best results. The exhibition HIIIIIIIT interprets this training as an allegorical negative example of a society, which relegates systemic failures to the inadequacy of the individual. Is it even possible to train so hard, to adapt so well that we can withstand our crisis-ridden present?

Artists: Stefan Panhans & Andrea Winkler, with an accompanying programme by Sunny Pfalzer
Curator: Katharina Brandl