Taxispalais Kunsthalle Tirol

With her performative works, Esther Strauß radically intervenes in the ABCs of conventionalized gestures. The artist proposes unfamiliar practices around death, birth and life, including the sense of touch and bodily fluids. Other works raise major ethical and political questions in unexpected and auto-confrontational ways.

What is the state of the political, institutional and familial discussion about perpetrators in Austria and Tyrol? How do people cope with their own Nazi background? Where is this concealed and forgotten as a means of self-protection? And where is it weaponized against others? How can the children’s children of perpetrators commemorate people who became victims of atrocities committed by their direct ancestors, without victimizing them anew? What responsibility do these children’s children bear in our times of new fascisms? The work of Esther Strauß rejects a moral didacticism that situates evil in others while being all too sure of its own rituals. Here, responsibility instead means to seek out and confront one’s own blind spots in a relentless, unprotected and permanent manner.

“Kindeskinder” (Children’s Children), Esther Strauß’ first large institutional solo show, presents older groups of work along with many new performance-based installations, sculptures and photographs the artist created specifically for the exhibition.

Curated by Nina Tabassomi