Monster Chetwynd: Moths, Bats and Velvet Worms! Moths, Bats and Heretics!

Moths, bats, and worms take over the Belvedere 21 and open the doors for heretics and witches: Monster Chetwynd’s first solo museum exhibition in Austria interweaves art, (hi)story, theory, craft, and community into a large-scale work explicitly developed for the house, which will be activated and animated by performers.

Chetwynd’s cross-genre practice, encompassing film, collage, painting, and installation, combines elements of folk theater, pop culture, and surrealist cinema. Chetwynd is known for anarchic bric-a-brac performances with handmade costumes, props, and sets, often employing simple materials that are easy to use and adapt. The emphasis is on the collaborative process of creating the artwork. Chetwynd describes the artistic work as “impatiently made,” yet draws on carefully researched, diverse cultural references, ranging from Christine de Pizan to Silvia Federici.

Monster Chetwynd’s exhibition at Belvedere 21 weaves in numerous allusions and references that take a variety of visual manifestations in the space. The installation stars a motley cast of characters: the non-conforming, resistant figures of witches and little devils; Renaissance paintings by Barthélemy d’Eyck; vastly enlarged film stills; nocturnal animals; and even hand-sewn dolls depicting the feminist film-makers Catherine Breillat and Joanna Hogg. Chetwynd centres marginalised players from human history and the animal kingdom alike, overlooked narratives and entities that obtain strident yet comical voices and play their own parts in the show as handcrafted subjects. Among these marginalised figures are the title’s heretics: people accused of actions or statements that violate official religious doctrine, who are often said to have unmanageable magic powers and secret knowledge.

Silvia Federici’s groundbreaking feminist Marxist study Caliban and the Witch (2004) is a key conceptual reference text for the artist and contributes another meta-level to the performance: Federici argues that the fear of women’s bodies, medical knowledge, and (sexual) self-determination among patriarchal power-holders was decisive in both medieval witch hunts and the beginnings of modern capitalism.

For the opening on November 6 and on January 17, Monster Chetwynd and an ensemble of performers activate the exhibition with the specially produced performance Silk and Beer (Wages for Housework).

The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication Monster Chetwynd: Moths, Bats and Velvet Worms! Moths, Bats and Heretics!, published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König.

Curated by Axel Köhne.
Assistant Curator: Andrea Kopranovic

Press contact: presse@belvedere.at / T +43 1 79 557-185.

View press materials here.