Future of Melancholia in Belgrad
Katharina Höglinger, Anna Schachinger 

The exhibition Future of Melancholia at the Gallery-Legacy of the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade presents a selection of contemporary Austrian artists alongside works by Graz pioneer of surrealism Susanne Wenger. The exhibition explores melancholy, nostalgia and surreal inner worlds as forms of artistic expression and responds to contemporary emotional and political contexts. Wenger, known for her speculative and surreal melancholic works, including Traumgesichte (1943÷44) and Icons of Great Sadness (1990s), depicts hybrid, dreamlike, ghostly beings. The contemporary artists – including Flora Hauser, Ernst Yohji Jaeger, Matthias Noggler, Maruša Sagadin, Klaus Schuster and Lisa Slawitz – deal with similar themes in various media.

Anna Schachinger draws on concepts such as care, motherhood, and spaces intended exclusively for women, and emphasizes the relevance of the diversity of female bodies and interdependent relationships with the environment and more-than-human beings. Her works incorporate various surfaces such as ceramics, velvet or used fabrics, and are often conceived as installations. She treats her painting practice as a stage that, emerging from a queer-feminist discourse, allows body fragments and color surfaces to merge with each other in such a way that perspective, space and time seem to dissolve, creating non-linear stories.

The works of Katharina Höglinger takes up everyday experiences. She captures fleeting thoughts and interests directly on canvas or paper. To depict the complexity and ambiguity of thoughts, she shows overlapping, intertwined figures. Höglinger’s works seem to have fallen out of time and convey a deep melancholy, revealing an introspective examination of the uncertainty of our present. Despite the surreal, sometimes gloomy figures, her images radiate lightness and the courage to embrace imperfection.

In a joint discussion with Sandro Droschl, Katharina Höglinger and Anna Schachinger, who are both part of Future of Melancholia at the Gallery-Legacy of Milica Zorić & Rodoljub Čolaković Gallery at MoCAB Belgrade, they will discuss their practices and their specific contexts in more detail. This will be accompanied by a virtual tour of the Belgrade exhibition, placing it in relation to the Graz edition.