VIENNA.- From filmmaker to political actionist, from theater and opera director to actor, visual artist, and bestselling author: Christoph Schlingensief’s (1960–2010) work goes beyond the limits of genres, creating exuberant layers of material and meaning that defy any categorization. Inherent in his oeuvre is a challenge to the audience to take an active stance—between irritation and insight, feeling overwhelmed and reflecting. With the exhibition It’s Not My Problem Anymore!—a (partial) quote by the artist from 2005—the MAK together with the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) | Free Republic of Vienna are dedicating the first comprehensive solo exhibition in Austria to Christoph Schlingensief (MAK Exhibition Hall, 13.5.–13.9.2026). The country, which he thrust into the heart of social contradictions with his intervention Please Love Austria – First Austrian Coalition Week (2000), will thus once again become the stage for his engagement with the public sphere, politics, and social responsibility.

From today’s perspective, many of his works can be read as anticipations of current conflicts in society: The artistic engagement with discourses on foreignness, racist projections, populist mechanisms, and media escalation make Schlingensief’s oeuvre a central point of reference for contemporary debates on migration, identity, and democratic fragility.

The starting point and center of the exhibition is the expansive installation Church of Fear (2003), which was presented for the first time at the Venice Biennale in 2003. It stylized the “faith in fear” into a dogma and transformed the global atmosphere after 9/11 into a parodic religious community. Church of Fear marks a focal point in Schlingensief’s work—as an ambivalent space between religion, art, and public discourse and a reflection of how power structures can be stabilized through emotions.

Building on Church of Fear, the curatorial narrative unfolds along two timelines: One looks back into the past and collects political and performative works from the late 1990s and early 2000s, such as Chance 2000 (1998), Please Love Austria – First Austrian Coalition Week (2000) in the context of the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen), Hamlet (2001), or Freakstars 3000 (2002). They reflect Schlingensief’s artistic experimentation with political reality, media publicity, social physicality, and public-theatrical interventions. 2

The other timeline looks ahead into the future and focuses on cinematic and opera like bodies of work such as The African Twin Towers (2005/2007), The Flying Dutchman (Manaus, 2007) or the video installation Untitled (Hasenverwesung; Drosophila Melanogaster; Holländer 2c. Ausweitung der Dunkelphase; Fremdverstümmelung) [Rabbit Decay; Drosophila Melanogaster; Dutchman 2c: Extension of the Dark Phase; Mutilation of the Other] (2007), in which motifs regarding biopolitics, society, mythology, and media are interwoven.

The exhibition does not unlock Schlingensief’s oeuvre as a linear, chronologically ordered retrospective, but rather as a staged presence. The dialogical constellation between early and late works gives rise to a cohesive oeuvre presenting artistic action not as a development in the classical sense, but as a permanent refiguration of fear, visibility, and social bodies—between stages, streets, and institutions. This setting makes it clear how in Christoph Schlingensief’s work artistic strategies from theater, film, installation, and action permeate one another, thus forming a multifaceted image of his thinking.

At the center is the movement of questioning, doubting, and failing—an attitude Schlingensief described as follows: “In my view, one can fail with great zest, joy, and purpose. In my work, this has always been the kind of failure created by suspending the finish line and the goal, space and time. If you can inwardly accept that failure is necessary to harness energy, a lot will happen.”

Christoph Schlingensief, born in Oberhausen, is one of the most controversially discussed artistic personas in the German-speaking world. In his career, he constantly walked a fine line between the arts: already in the 1980s, he emerged as a filmmaker with works such as Egomania: Island Without Hope (1986) and 100 Years of Adolf Hitler (1988/89). His characteristic principle of layering and overwhelming became evident early on—a work at the limits of perception, where image and sound structures collide to create new narrative spaces. In the 1990s and 2000s, he moved into the public spotlight with politically charged interventions such as Chance 2000 or the Vienna container project Please Love Austria – First Austrian Coalition Week. Simultaneously, he developed a body of work in theater and opera that consistently opposed the creation of illusion. His opera stagings, particularly his radically new interpretation of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal for the Bayreuth Festival in 2004, shattered the traditional expectations of the opera audience.

His visual art works also deepened his interest in the materiality of film, in decomposition, layering, and moments of interruption between images. Installations such as Kaprow City (2006/07) at the Migros Museum of Contemporary Art in Zurich or 18 Bilder pro Sekunde [18 Frames per Second] (2005) at the Haus der Kunst in Munich demonstrate the complexity of his 3 reflections on media and perception. With the long-term project Operndorf Afrika [Opera Village Africa] (2009–) in Burkina Faso, Schlingensief expanded his work into a cultural and social engagement that has an impact far beyond the aesthetic dimension.

His late works, influenced by the diagnosis of lung cancer in 2008, process existential questions in an artistic way, such as A Church of Fear vs. the Alien Within (2008). Despite his illness, Schlingensief remained inexhaustibly productive until his death in 2010. Posthumously, in 2011, he was awarded the Golden Lion for the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, which was curated by Susanne Gaensheimer in cooperation with Aino Laberenz.

In line with his artistic path, the exhibition CHRISTOPH SCHLINGENSIEF: It’s Not My Problem Anymore! outlines a dynamic field of tension, in which art can be experienced as a proposition, as something overwhelming, and a questioning of societal realities. Visitors encounter an oeuvre that breaks boundaries, allows for contradictions, and invites reflection—in the spirit of Schlingensief’s radical impulse to think of art as an experience that irritates, overwhelms, stirs, and opens up new perspectives.

The exhibition is curated by Swiss art historian and curator Raphael Gygax in collaboration with Aino Laberenz, long-time companion and wife of Christoph Schlingensief. Raphael Gygax is a recognized expert in time-based art as well as performative and cinematic practices. He has curated numerous international exhibitions and regularly works with artists and artist estates.

Aino Laberenz is a stage and costume designer as well as a curator. As director of the Operndorf Afrika initiated by Christoph Schlingensief and executor of his estate, she has been dedicated to the preservation and continuation of his artistic legacy for many years.

Raphael Gygax is also the curator of a further exhibition on Christoph Schlingensief in the Gropius Bau in Berlin, which will be on show from 9.10.2026 to 17.1.2027 as a joint project by the Gropius Bau / Berliner Festspiele, Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) | Freie Republik Wien, and the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts.