Recasted Relations. Graduates of the Mentoring Program Art
Since 2017, the mentoring program, as a support platform for young artists at the Academy, has offered graduates the opportunity to gain diverse insights into the art world and practical knowledge for developing a professional artistic career by working with a mentor.
As exhibition presence is one of the key criteria to establish oneself in the art field, the mentoring program will be complemented by a new biennial exhibition series at Exhibit Gallery starting in fall 2023.
Participants:
Brishty Alam, Nicoleta Auersperg, Julia S. Goodman, Sara Lanner, Yein Lee, Juliana Lindenhofer, Flavia Mazzanti, Laura Nitsch, Nora Severios, Laura Sperl.
Jury: Sylvie Aigner, Barbara Horvath and Vanessa Joan Müller
Curators: Ingeborg Erhart, Barbara Pflanzner
Editing: Mý Huê McGowran
Graphics: Dimitrij Ritter
The aftermath of the pandemic, the ongoing war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, inflation, and the climate crisis that can no longer be denied and which has resulted in migration and movement are reasons enough to think about what happens now, moving forward. How we as people should and want to deal with each other in the future. How, generally speaking, we would like to reshape relationships – in an interpersonal sense, but also beyond. How can we find ways out of the mechanisms of a neoliberal society with its constant call for optimization and acceleration, which increasingly alienates people from each other under the pretext of optimal individualization? [1]
For artists who have completed their studies in precisely this epochal time of upheaval, it is further added that they – who are already on the threshold between education and independent artistic practice and are just leaving behind the “life phase of art studies” [2] – have to design new work and life situations under these radically changed conditions, which, of course, also affect the institutions and the art market.
In the exhibition Recasted Relations, ten artists who have participated in the Mentoring Program of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna[3] for graduates in the past three years show recent works in which they reflect on interpersonal relationships, physical and social environments, their relationship to artistic practice, global coexistence, and spaces of possibility for new performative and relational bodies. Forming the foundation of this is the analysis of anthropocentric conditions as well as reflecting on both the vulnerability and on the resilience of humans and the environment.
[1] August 1, 2012: Recasted Relations is the umbrella term for the exhibition year 2023 and, in addition to the show of the same name of the latest works by female graduates of recent years, also encompasses the exhibitions Sleepy Politics: How to Learn About Conviviality and Alternative Life Forms Through Sleep, March 22 – May 21, 2023, and Bordering Plants, November 11, 2023 – February 18, 2024, https://www.akbild.ac.at/de/museum-und-ausstellungen/Exhibit/jahresprogramm/jahresthema.
[2] See Ana Dimke, Woher wir kommen, wohin wir gehen, Lebensphase Kunststudium, in Kunstforum International, vol. 274, 2021, ÜberLeben und Kunst. Bedingungen künstlerischer Existenz –Kunststudium – Experimente mit offenem Ausgang, p. 132ff.
[3] As a support platform for young artists at the academy, since 2017 the Mentoring Program has offered graduates the opportunity to gain diverse insights into the art industry and practical knowledge for developing a professional artistic career by collaborating with a mentor. Since participating in exhibitions is one of the main criteria through which artists establish themselves in the art field, the Mentoring Program is to be complemented by a new, biennial exhibition series at the Exhibit Galerie starting in the fall of 2023. Participants in the mentoring program were eligible to apply for Recasted Relations in an open call. Sylvie Aigner, Barbara Horvath, and Vanessa Joan Müller selected ten positions as expert jurors.
Translating and Editing: Mý Huê McGowran