BADEN-BADEN.- How do we experience the real today? What is it made of and how does our bodily perception change with our reality?

Studio space 45cbm at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden presents the exhibition “In Delirium I Wear My Body” by Berlin-based artist Monika Grabuschnigg (*1987 in Feldkirch, Austria). In her first institutional solo exhibition, she deepens her ongoing exploration of the effects of digitality and virtuality on the physical body and human self-awareness.

For the exhibition, Monika Grabuschnigg created three seemingly free-floating ceramic reliefs, staggered into the depth of the space. The lightness of the presentation contrasts with the sculptures’ material presence. The sturdy ceramic elements are visibly textured, marked by the traces of their manual production, eliciting the desire to touch the various surfaces and experience them sensually.

The colours of the sculptures range from white and light brown, to pale pink and dark red, to shades of purple and blue, creating a spectrum reminiscent of the inner and outer hues of the human body. Bodies are also evoked through the size and interior forms of the three sculptures – bodies no longer tied to the given physical environment, freely forming and de-realizing themselves. In their free play with and detachment from traditional forms, they seem to invoke processes from the virtual sphere, where the appearance and potentiality of bodies are unencumbered by material and social constraints. Ultimately though, Monika Grabuschnigg does not release her sculptures into a space of unrestricted possibilities; using earthen ceramics, she embeds them within the traditional reference system of human world experience.

For thousands of years human hands have been shaping clay and loam to create useful things and reflect experience. In our digital present, however, an essential part of the personally experienced world has shifted into virtual space. Grabuschnigg specifically employs ceramic, a material rich in tradition, to trace the physical effects of this shift.

She thus manages to make her artistic statement without recourse to a screen, whose smooth surface is usually regarded as the constitutive interface between the real and virtual worlds – sometimes still perceived as opposites – and indeed as the point of contact between the two spheres. Hence its status as an emblem of the present and, at the same time, the first point of reference for artistic exploration. The artistic creations of the past years culminated in a certain artistic trend essentially concerned with the mimicry of images and products reflected on the screen’s surface. Here physical perception appeared as a mere derivative of calculated or commercial goals and was therefore presented as fabricated, manipulative, and ultimately depersonalized. Affective impulses were, after all, no longer a form of immediate feeling, but rather media-technological effects of capitalist production. However, art critic Michal Novotný recently noted that the preoccupation with the surface phenomena and commodity form of the digital age concealed a deeper layer that this formal language could only hint at but not express in any great detail: a longing for the feeling of one’s own body and for the interhuman. It is therefore no surprise that not so long ago he identified a counter-movement towards physical self-perception, emotion and the artistic representation of the affective consequences of the virtual deformation of human experience.

In a similar vein, theorists such as Eva Illouz or Sianne Ngai have claimed that the ongoing transformation of the human world has brought about – and continues to bring about – profound changes, all the way down to the somatic level. Regardless of whether one is overcome with joy or weeping uncontrollably, the perception of a physical impulse essentially depends on whether it occurs in the physical presence of a trusted person or opposite a face that is only virtually present, mediated by a screen. This shows that even basic emotions and affects, such as grief, joy, pain or excitement, do not exist beyond time, but are always historically and materially determined.

But it is not only sensory experience that continually evolves; physical existence also constantly transforms itself. Maurice Merleau-Ponty already recognized that the physical self only emerges in opposition to another entity. He saw the development of all ideas about the body, the affects and the subjective world of emotions as a genuinely interpersonal process. For him, human self-awareness was an interpersonal experience, essentially based on the exchange with a counterpart, with another body, entering into dialogue with one’s own body. Recently the queer-theory-influenced astrophysicist Karen Barad radicalized this notion, arguing that bodies and entities, whether physical or immaterial, never exist autonomously, but only ever emerge from interactions. In a time when interpersonal interactions are largely conducted via technological, mediating objects, this conclusion is highly pertinent: every experience is accompanied by and expands the virtual sphere, mediated by machines, which we continually connect to our bodies.

It is precisely those changes Monika Grabuschnigg explores in her art. Her ceramic bodies seem to extend into space, while essentially existing in their two-dimensionality. The separation between interiority and exteriority is abolished; an identification of inner corporeality and outer surfaces becomes impossible. Monika Grabuschnigg’s artistic practice transcends the opposition between real and virtual, creating a new paradigm that absorbs and transforms the human body. In her art, material corporeality thus emerges as a potential to be explored anew; an exploration that can only take place in a mixture of the virtual and the material, between bodies, appearances and affects.

Monika Grabuschnigg is a Berlin-based artist. She studied in Vienna, Santiago de Chile and Jerusalem. Her works have already been presented in numerous group and solo exhibitions, including Pina Vienna, Vienna (2019) at Polansky Gallery, Brno (2019), Reiter Galerie, Leipzig (2019), Carbon12, Dubai (2018), NADA Miami Monika Grabuschnigg is a Berlin-based artist. She studied in Vienna, Santiago de Chile and Jerusalem. Her works have already been presented in numerous group and solo exhibitions, including Pina Vienna, Vienna (2019) at Polansky Gallery, Brno (2019), Reiter Galerie, Leipzig (2019), Carbon12, Dubai (2018), NADA Miami (2018) and HPFA Berlin (2018). Grabuschnigg has been awarded the "Berlin Art Prize" 2018.


1 Kerstin Stakemeier: Austauschbarkeiten. Ästhetik gegen Kunst, in: Texte zur Kunst (98) 2015, 124-143.
2 Michal Novotný: The Emo-Romantic Turn, Mousse Magazine (65), http://moussemagazine.it/emo-romantic-turn-michal-novotny-2018/ (accessed 16.06.2019).
3 Sianne Ngai: Our Aesthetic Categories. Cute, Zany, Interesting, Cambridge 2012 / Eva Illouz: Gefühle im Zeitalter des Kapitalismus, Berlin 2004.
4 Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Phenomenology of Perception, London 2012.
5 Karen Barad: Berühren – das Nicht-Menschliche, das ich also bin (V.1.1.), in: Susanne Witzgall & Kerstin Stakemeier: Macht des Materials/Politik der Materialität, Zürich/Berlin 2014, 163-176, p. 172f.