Shleephouse

Graduation show at department of Sculpture and Space, Paulusplatz, Vienna.

Shleephouse is an installation consisting of seven sculptures and a publication. The work on Shleephouse is based on an examination of different forms of demarcation between humans and animals. I am interested in spatialised boundaries and how slight shifts can lead to the overlapping and intertwining of seemingly seperated habitats. I finally looked into my own upbringing in the Austrian countryside: animals, priests, slaughterhouses, vegetable gardens, a village culture characterised by Catholicism and the associated practices of exclusion and marginalisation. The question of which living beings we allocate which living space leads to further questions about affection, disgust, care, dominance, usefulness, efficiency, coexistence and love. What and who do we want close to our bodies?
Out of the need to speak honestly about these things, I developed a fiction. The components that make up this exhibition - the materials, their processing, the setting and the text ‘Das Grundstück’ - together tell a story that feeds on my biography, but does not lie when it deviates from it.