CURATORS TEXT

Tanja Prušnik

RELATIONS II Female – bridge over ocean and continent – Bridging Cultures, Shaping Narratives

The works of Birgit Graschopf, Kristín Gunnlaugsdóttir, Sigríður Rut Marrow, Tanja Prušnik, Ramona Schnekenburger, and Hulda Vilhjálmsdóttir are connected through a particular sensitivity to the in-between to those quiet transitions between body and landscape, memory and presence, visibility and inner experience. Their works do not emerge from a desire to depict reality, but from the need to make atmospheric states visible and physically tangible, and to create relationships between one another. One work seems to grow out of another; connections become visible, even though the works were not created in direct dialogue.

Within the exhibition, material becomes a carrier of memory and touch: concrete, sandpaper, fish skin, textile fragments, paint, water, and paper preserve traces of time, movement, and lived experience. The artists work in open, process-oriented, and often intuitive ways. Their works develop through layers, condensations, and transformations — like landscapes slowly changing, or memories that can never be fully grasped. Iceland and Austria, two geographically distant yet artistically connected places, play an important role as mediating landscapes within these artistically and partly feminist-oriented practices.

Again and again, the female body appears at the center — not as representation, but as a sensitive space of perception, vulnerability, strength, and connection. Nature is not treated as a background, but as a living presence inscribed into gestures, materials, and movements. The sea, waterfalls, Icelandic landscapes, and organic forms become resonant spaces for inner emotional states.

Through the juxtaposition of these artistic positions, a poetic dialogue emerges about closeness, transformation, and belonging. Despite their different media and visual languages, all of the works share a quiet intensity and a search for forms of expression beyond the explicit. Their works open spaces for the unspoken — fragile and open visual worlds in which memory, body, and landscape enter into relation with one another.