Definite or indefinite or…? Debates on gender in art and politics
Silvia Stoller
Video
According to Dr Silvia Stoller, the fact that the faces are lacking expression is not only irritating, as the human bodies depicted do not have a defining feature, but the artist also confronts us with questions of human identity and their detectability, such as gender. This question central to gender theories, also arises in other contexts: How can gender be defined and expressed, how do we experience gender and what are the limits of determining and perceiving gender? When is it necessary to label gender, and in what ways is labelling and identification problematic? In this lecture, Stoller will show how Katherine Bradford’s art can be linked directly to current feminist gender debates. She will debate gender in art and politics and explore the question of performative gender identity.
Artists
Participating artists
Univ.-Doz. in DDr.in Silvia Stoller
is a philosopher and gender researcher. She teaches at the Universities of Vienna and Graz, where her teaching and research focuses include phenomenology, anthropology, contemporary philosophy, philosophy of animals (human-animal studies), philosophy of the body, existential philosophy (gender, age, pain, love, play, laughter) as well as masculinity studies and gender studies.
Selected publications: Existence — Difference — Construction. Phenomenology of Gender in Beauvoir, Irigaray and Butler: Munich: Wilhelm Fink 2010; ed. Simone de Beauvoir’s Philosophy of Age. Gender, Ethics, and Time. Berlin: De Gruyter 2014. ed. (with Susanne Hochreiter): Man — Men — Masculinities. Interdisciplinary Contributions from Masculinity Studies. Vienna: Praesens Verlag 2018.
More contributions
Exhibition Tour
Diego Bianchi: Errores Irreales
Video
Diego Bianchi’s immersive sculptural installations reinterpret the concepts of sculpture and of the torso, taking seriously the sensitivity and distress of the human body as subjected to manifold pressures, and expanding and updating its forms of expression.
Exhibition Tour Diego Bianchi Exhibition Tour
Celina Eceiza: Ofrenda
Video
A metabolic force governs the growth of Celina Eceiza’s work, which involves textile collages, sculptures, paintings and drawings — both tiny and colossal in scale — as laborious as they are elementary. The artist combines handcrafted textile techniques and processes such as patchwork, found object collages and, more recently, chalk pastels, which give her images a new sense of fluidity.
Ausstellungsrundgang Celina Eceiza Annemarie Arzberger
dreamed awake
Slide show
For HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark the artist has developed her first own performative presentation, with a setting for her puppets with three scenes set in an imaginary spaceship, an exhibition, and the spaces that the scenes depict: the Schlouflaboar, the Houloudecks, and the Space Grotto Disco. The piece is a combination of physical theater and puppetry, performed by the artist together with her sister Katharina Arzberger and accompanied by musical interludes arranged by Manuel Obriejtan.
Slide Show Annemarie Arzberger Diego Bianchi
Errores Irreales
Slide show
Diego Bianchi (*1969 Buenos Aires, lives in Buenos Aires) is considered one of Argentina’s leading artists and has, in particular, updated the concept of sculpture. For his installative and performative exhibition Errores Irreales at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Bianchi has assembled a selection of his sculptures that play with the concept of the body.
Slide show Diego Bianchi Diego Bianchi
Errores Irreales
Performance
Slide show
Errores Irreales is only truly activated by the performance staged by Diego Bianchi himself in order to complete his theatrical installation, which takes physicality and its limits to a new level.
Diego Bianchi, Performance Celina Eceiza
Ofrenda
Slide show
Ofrenda [Offering] presents a way of inhabiting a space as if the architecture were a body, breathing erratically, changing states as you pass from one room to the next. The rigidity of the building collapses as the walls are draped in thousands of metres of fabric joined together through the collective and timeless action of sewing, until they form a single smooth surface, sensitive to the slightest change.
Slide show Celina Eceiza Abaseh Mirvali
Artistic Director, viennacontemporary
Video
The conversation between Abaseh Mirvali, director of viennacontemporary, and Sandro Droschl spans Diego Bianchi’s current exhibition and Celina Eceiza’s work in the context of Argentine art history to Mirvali’s many years of expertise and her international career. At the same time, her central role in the dynamic and innovative viennacontemporary 2025 was highlighted.
Abaseh Mirvali Talk Morning Séance
alias Simone Borghi
Video
Italian composer and sound artist Simone Borghi, alias Morning Séance, expands Celina Eceiza’s “soft museum” in her exhibition Ofrenda at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark with his atmospheric, constantly changing music, using his musical performance to enable visitors to experience physicality, space, and perception in new ways.
Morning Séance alias Simone Borghi