Birgit Jürgenssen (1949–2003) belongs to the artistic avant-garde in Austria. With a discerning gaze, a poetic sense, an experimental curiosity and a subversive, sometimes biting humour, Jürgenssen’s multifaceted oeuvre focuses in repeated inquiries on the role of the woman in our society in its various manifestations: interpersonal relationships, corporeality, socially established concepts of beauty, relations between the sexes or the individual‘s identity. In addition to these social discourses and as a consequence of her investigation of her own corporeality, Jürgenssen repeatedly examines the relationships between human, animal and plant; her metamorphic arrangements give rise to poetical hybrid beings that seem to dissolve our conceptual distinctions.

Jürgenssen’s approach should not be read merely as an artistic protest against the structural suppression of women. Repeatedly coming to the fore are issues involving the individual’s identity, the (gender-transcending) possibility of breaking out of assigned social roles so as to act with independent responsibility, and the transience of all existence. mehr