Ines Doujak. Geistervölker

Vienna-based artist Ines Doujak (b. 1959 in Klagenfurt) has developed a multidisciplinary practice that encompasses photography, performance, film, and installation. The artist uses political theory and natural and man-made objects to deconstruct the political implications of sexist and racist stereotypes. Her practice is characterized by meticulous research and draws on the traditions of carnival and masquerade, as well as other motifs from cultural history, to uncover exploitative structures and inequalities in society, often in relation to colonial histories.

The exhibition looks into Doujak’s entire practice, which spans more than three decades, through establishing multiple lines of research that show the continuities, consistencies, and integrity of her feminist art practice. In her work we often encounter a margin and a center, and her research is “eccentric” in that word’s literal meaning: it is “off-center” in its movement in both time and space.

In this exhibition, Doujak thinks about the exploitation of Earth, in a way that exceeds all limits, in order for capital to be accumulated. Through ideas of the germination and cultivation of viruses, seeds, and dialectics of hope, the artist intertwines the dynamics of a simultaneously economic, microbiological, and ecological crisis. For years, her work has looked into diseased human bodies in relation to flora and fauna and the pending threat of pandemic illnesses. The exhibition is a continuation of Ines Doujak’s work as an artist, but also as an archivist, a researcher, and a collector. Such labors demand time, and in this exhibition, we shall take the time to trace the links between them.

Curators: WHW