Amnesia

In the MQ’s Sternenpassage, passersby encounter Heidi Specker’s lions as luminous photographs in a play of light and shadow. The artist approaches the sculptures so closely that their materiality merges into the pictorial space: the sandstone becomes a surface, the relief a drawing of light and shadow. Through reflection, cropping, and the reduction to black and white, Specker transforms the original figures into nearly abstract forms that oscillate between presence and dissolution. In the context of the Sternenpassage, where images of the sky meet urban movement, this gives rise to images that reflect rather than document – on perception, memory, and the silent transformation of matter into light.

During her residency at the MQ in August 2025, Heidi Specker worked on photographic archives. At the Sternenpassage, she presents a variation on her series “Amnesia Gera” (2024) drawn from this material. Accompanying the presentation is the publication “Lumen Zine #15, Heidi Specker, 2025” (ed. Sabine Jelinek, Schlebrügge.Editor, Vienna), featuring a text by Ruth Horak and Christian Köberl.

Curator: Sabine Jelinek