Maruša Sagadin: Luv Birds in toten Winkeln

Who is building? What, for whom, and where? Influenced by architectural history, Maruša Sagadin’s (b. 1978) artistic investigations revolve around the social context of a building or location. From September 21, 2023, to January 14, 2024, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt presents a new site-specific installation by the artist in its Rotunda. With Luv Birds in toten Winkeln, Sagadin interacts with the conditions of the Rotunda as a semi-public space, assembling together monumental sculptures from three key groups of works, which allude to passageways, pillars, and benches; the entire installation can be traversed by visitors or used as a spot to linger. Her works find their impetus in the intersection of private and public space, combining elements of architecture, sculpture, and painting.

Dr. Sebastian Baden, director of the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, says: “With her installation created specifically for the Schirn Rotunda, Maruša Sagadin invites us to view and occupy public space in a new way. The artist is concerned with creating infrastructures with her sculptures that function without predefined usages, in turn enabling new forms of accessibility and interaction. In this way, Sagadin creates important impulses for questioning discursive fixations. Her art opens up new perspectives on our cityscape, as well as on physicality, communication, and participation in society.”

Sagadin’s attention is focused on often overlooked architectural structures, which she imbues with new meanings, functions, and physical associations. Her use of humor and exaggeration, both in her formal language and in her use of color, exposes the social mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion found in urban built environments, while breaking with established norms of viewing art. Playfully subversive, her works reference elements of popular culture, subculture, and the applied arts. Through an interplay of gender, language, and sculpture, they subvert existing norms and approach sculpture as a means of making things visible.

Taking “blind spots” as the intellectual point of departure for her installation in the Schirn Rotunda, Sagadin considers the contradictions inherent in quotidian architecture in urban space, such as staircases, sidewalk curbs, and rows of houses. By definition, blind spots can be difficult to observe, dangerous, or obstructive, but at the same time they can serve as places of retreat, rest, or hiding. With “Luv Birds in toten Winkeln”, the artist thus refers to places on the periphery of our gaze, and the possibility of granting them new meanings.

Marie Oucherif, curator of the exhibition, notes: “In her work, Maruša Sagadin examines issues of spatial design, sculpture, and feminism. The installation in the Schirn Rotunda combines these three elements to encourage reflection on the social and gender inequalities inscribed in urban public space. Nonetheless, this is always done with a wink and a smile—Sagadin’s works combine lightness and joy with profound reflection.”

The exhibition “Maruša Sagadin: Luv Birds in toten Winkeln” is supported by the Slovenian Ministry of Culture and SKICA Berlin—Slovenian Cultural Centre Berlin in the context of Slovenia’s Guest of Honour presence at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2023 and by the SCHIRN ZEITGENOSSEN.

A catalog edited by curator Marie Oucherif will be published mid October 2023 in a bilingual edition, with an essay by Marie Oucherif, and a foreword by the director of the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Sebastian Baden.

Director: Dr. Sebastian Baden
Curator: Marie Oucherif, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
Press contact: Johanna Pulz (Head of Press/Public Relations): presse@schirn.de / T +49 (0) 69 29 98 82 148
Press material: schirn.de/en/newsroom