For the 2022 autumn exhibition in the tresor of the Bank Austria Kunstforum, the Kunstforum Wien has invited Lizaveta German and Maria Lanko, curators of this year’s Ukraine contribution to the 59th Biennale di Venezia, and in dialogue with Bettina M. Busse, curator of the Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien, to curate a presentation featuring Ukrainian women artists. The exhibition shows positions by four Ukrainian women artists: Lucy Ivanova , Zhanna Kadyrova, Elena Subach and Anna Zvyagintseva.

Associated with Egon Schiele’s painting Death and Maiden of 1915 which relates to his recruitment for military service in the First World War, the exhibition Death and the Maiden gathers together experiences, observations and emotions ensuing from the war and its continuing consequence for citizens of the Ukraine and European society. The exhibits were created both prior to and after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Together they bear witness to a new sensibility for topics that are more relevant now than ever: memory, vision, the fragility of the body, connections between life and death, the tension between nature and the man-made world, also the role of art in conditions of devastation.

This new sensibility is shaped to a great extent today precisely by women artists. Some fled the country, others remained, volunteered, and many travelled throughout Europe to participate in artist residencies. Whether far from danger or in immediate vicinity, they have all similarly absorbed the horrors of war and the way it has affected peoples’ lives, directly or indirectly, and they have expressed this in their art.

Guest curators: Lizaveta German, Maria Lanko, The Naked Room Kyiv
Curator Kunstforum Wien: Bettina M. Busse
In cooperation with Petra Stelzer, www.imaginehumanrights.com

Supported by the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund (UEAF), within the "Cultural Emergency Response" programme of the Prince Claus Fund For Culture and Development.

Opening on November 3rd, 2022 at 7.30 pm. Registration for the opening here.