Dr. Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer Susanne Wenger's painting between Africa and Europe

Lecture

In this lecture, Austrian art historian, art critic, and curator Dr. Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer will talk about Susanne Wenger’s paintings and graphic art and discuss how the work of the special Àdùnní Olórìṣà can be situated between European modernism and the African Yoruba cult.

In her art historical and curatorial practice, Borchhardt-Birbaumer approaches Wenger not exclusively from a biographical perspective, but as a case study of transcultural art production in which European modernism and indigenous spiritual practice are productively intertwined. In her essay, co-authored with Alexandra Schantl for the volume Susanne Wenger. Artist. Priestess. Adventurer, Borchhardt Birbaumer illuminates the artist as a Gesamtkunstwerk whose oeuvre results from the continuous exchange between Wenger’s European educational experiences and her long-standing, ritual-based practice in Òsogbo, Nigeria. She interprets Wenger’s work as an exemplary example of the fusion of art and ritual, in which traditional Yoruba cosmologies are not exoticized, but understood as living, creative sources of artistic formal languages.

Borchhardt Birbaumer focuses in particular on the question of how Wenger combines traditional religious symbolism and modern artistic strategies in her practice, thereby developing a new sacred aesthetic that addresses both postcolonial reflections and debates on authenticity, cultural transgression, and performative identity.

Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer (born September 21, 1955 in Vienna, lives in Vienna, Bonn, and Palma) is an art historian, journalist, and exhibition curator. She studied painting and graphic arts at the Academy of Applied Arts and art history, archaeology, and Byzantine studies at the University of Vienna. Dissertation in 1987 (Oil paintings in Bologna from 1580 to 1710. An attempt to combine theory and practice). From 1986 to 2008, she taught at the University of Vienna, since 2000 at the Academy of Fine Arts, and since 2004 at the Max Reinhardt Seminar, mdw Vienna.

Publications: Imago Noctis – Die Nacht in der Kunst des Abendlandes (Imago Noctis – Night in Western Art), Vienna/Cologne/Weimar 2003, Lore Heuermann. On the Peak of Time, Klagenfurt/Vienna 2008, Die Nacht im Zwielicht (Night in Twilight), (ed. with Agnes Husslein-Arco and Harald Krejci) Munich 2012, Werner Hofmann prospektiv (ed. with Elisabeth Voggeneder, Forum Frohner Krems) Cologne 2019, Adolf Frohner Malerei. Werkverzeichnis II (ed. Dieter Ronte, Elisabeth Voggeneder) Bielefeld-Berlin 2017, texts for numerous exhibition catalogs, Giorgione (Vienna 2004), Joseph Beuys (Krems 2008), Jürgen Klauke (Passau 2006 and Vienna 2013) Lucas-Bosch-Gelatin (Krems 2011), Kiki Kogelnik (Krems 2013).

Art Critic Award 2007, State Prize for Art Criticism 2023, jury and advisory board member for the City of Vienna, BMUKK, and numerous institutions and museums. Since 2009, member of the supervisory board of the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

Artists

Participating artists

Dr. Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer (born September 21, 1955 in Vienna, lives in Vienna, Bonn, and Palma) is an art historian, journalist, and exhibition curator. She studied painting and graphic arts at the Academy of Applied Arts and art history, archaeology, and Byzantine studies at the University of Vienna. Dissertation in 1987 (Oil paintings in Bologna from 1580 to 1710. An attempt to combine theory and practice). From 1986 to 2008, she taught at the University of Vienna, since 2000 at the Academy of Fine Arts, and since 2004 at the Max Reinhardt Seminar, mdw Vienna.