June 30–October 23, 2022
Opening: June 30, 7pm, with a welcome by WHW and an introduction by Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu
BURN & GLOOM! GLOW & MOON! Thousand Years of Troubled Genders is the most comprehensive exhibition to date of Vienna-based artist and filmmaker Katrina Daschner. The exhibition, carefully put together by Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu, encompasses works from the 1990s to the present and journeys through over two decades of intersectional and queering practices that continue to undermine (neo-)liberal, heteropatriarchal conceptions of sexuality, gender, subjectivity, and relationships.
Daschner works with various closely interrelated media, ranging from sculpture, textile, music, performance, community-based work, and, most prominently, film, which sits at the heart of BURN & GLOOM! GLOW & MOON!, as does collaboration, an integral and long-standing focus of her practice.
Daschner’s writing has persistently questioned patriarchal standards in Western culture. She writes and directs her plays herself, with assistance from Vienna’s LGBT community, and through diverse concepts of bodily flexibility. She manipulates the borders between humans and non-humans as well as what is considered the norm in society through stylized performances, revealing the artificiality of the gendered binary—the dualism of men* and womxn—and the prejudices it breeds while liberating the body.
These creative endeavors serve as the connecting threads between her scenes, settings, and people. The basic yet highly visible threads in her textile-based pieces are like the squeeze needed to wake up from a dream. The exhibition BURN & GLOOM! GLOW & MOON! employs the tactics of threading, circling, and wandering to create fresh connections amongst Daschner’s works. Her surreal settings cause some potent elements of movies and performances to transform into compelling installations themselves and interact with one another in fresh ways. As a result, BURN & GLOOM! GLOW & MOON! generates a sensual, tactile, and emotional experience. The monuments of white patriarchal heteronormativity are being painstakingly and joyfully brought down one by one in this environment.
BURN & GLOOM! GLOW & MOON! Thousand Years of Troubled Genders confronts, touches, embraces, and dreams of transforming “femme”-ness, transforming bodies, and transforming genders. It arrives at a critical time of public empowerment for womxn (cis and trans), LGBTQIA+, crip, and BIPOC communities in the contemporary art world. In touch with various communities, who were part of the process of its making, the exhibition continues to propose different avenues for queer-feminist political action. We hope this whole beautiful, sensual, plurivocal endeavor will inspire us to go to places where love will bring us together instead of tearing us apart.
Museumsquartier, Museumsplatz 1
1070 Vienna
Austria