Curator

Anna Jermolaewa uses her work to observe human beings living together, their social conditions and political prerequisites. Her process results in videos, photographs, and drawings, as well as room-spanning mises-en-scène, where she questions, in a critical yet humorous fashion, seemingly insignificant and trivial manifestations of the human condition. However, Jermolaewa’s art is humorous and anecdotal only at first glance, behind it lies a clear critique of political power structures, ideologies, and social grievances.

For the Austrian contribution to the Biennale Arte 2024, Jermolaewa will span themes ranging from her personal migration experience to forms of non-violent resistance against authoritarian regimes. The presentation will comprise videos, installations, light objects, sound, and performative elements in a combination of newly developed or elaborated works.

Anna Jermolaewa’s contribution at the Austrian Pavilion blends in seamlessly with the general theme of the Biennale Arte 2024, Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere chosen by Adriano Pedrosa, which concentrates on foreignness, migration and issues of national identity and cultural diversity, with a focus on artists who have known flight and migration.

Gabriele Spindler is an art historian and currently heads the Department of Art and Cultural Studies at the OÖ Landes-Kultur GmbH in Linz. She studied art history and Italian at the University of Salzburg and French at the University of Vienna. In 2000 she joined the Landesgalerie Linz, where she worked as senior custodian and curator for modern and contemporary art until 2012. Between 2012 and 2020 she held the position of director at the Landesgalerie, realising projects, exhibitions, and publications on art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with the interwar period in Austria, photography, and contemporary art as her focal points.