Between Mountains / Тоолордун ортосунда

Opening: 01.02., 18:00

The collaborative project Between Mountains / Тоолордун ортосунда by Pia Wilma Wurzer and MQ Artist-in-Residence Kamilla Dzhaparova, who is a guest at MuseumsQuartier in November and December 2026 in cooperation with the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs (BMEIA), is conceived as an ongoing virtual exchange of letters between Austria and Kyrgyzstan.

Starting with questions posed to one another, the two artists engage in a personal and poetic dialogue through short video works. They share stories about their respective worlds, landscapes, traditions and memories. Rather than comparing two countries, the focus is on the encounter between individual perspectives and experiences

focus is on the encounter between individual perspectives and experiences.For the presentation at the MQ Pop-Up Schauraum, two questions form the starting point for this dialogue.

Pia Wilma Wurzer explores the question: “What do you carry within you from the place you come from?” In response, she is developing an audiovisual mixtape lasting approximately 20 minutes, which combines personal music tracks with field recordings collected from everyday life and is presented as a continuous loop. Choirs, street music and atmospheric recordings from a rural setting enter into dialogue with musical pieces the artist has produced over the past five years.

The sound composition is complemented by short video clips that pass before the viewer without any discernible narrative structure. Through experimental editing, layering and recombination, an audiovisual sculpture emerges in which folklore and biographical traces converge. The result is a subjective landscape of sounds and images that brings personal memories into relation with the viewers’ own associations and sensations.

MQ Artist-in-Residence Kamilla Dzhaparova explores the question: “What did darkness mean to you as a child?” In her memory, darkness was a space of imagination in which familiar surroundings lost their contours and could transform into other forms and stories.

For her video work, Dzhaparova uses 35mm film negatives from her family archive, alongside her own drawings on small transparent supports. These move between abstract and figurative forms. Using an old projector, she projects both image sources, films the projections with a camera and edits them into an experimental video work. In the process, photographic images from the family archive encounter newly created drawings.

The film negatives and the transparent supports bearing the drawings are also presented as independent objects in the exhibition space. The work thus combines different forms of image-making and opens up a dialogue between inherited visual material and personal imagination.

Both artistic approaches move between personal experience and collective imaginaries, between memory and imagination. In different ways, they explore how places and experiences continue to resonate within us and find expression in sounds, images and material traces.

The presentation offers a snapshot of an ongoing process. The works on display represent initial responses within an exchange that will continue and evolve through further questions and video letters. Step by step, a shared space of visual experience emerges, in which personal stories connect across geographical and cultural boundaries.

Pia Wilma Wurzer: filmmaker and media artist, born and raised in Carinthia in the south of Austria, works primarily with moving image, text and sound. Further processes of her artistic practice can be found in olfactorics and performance. She has lived in Vienna since 2014 and studies at the Academy of Fine Arts.

Kamilla Dzhaparova (b. 2000, Kyrgyzstan) is an artist and curator based in Bishkek. Her practice moves between video, photography, and painting, exploring memory, landscape, materiality, and the relationship between people and place. Her works often begin with personal observations and everyday surroundings, looking at how places hold memories and how our perception of them changes over time.Alongside her artistic practice, Kamilla Dzhaparova works as a Museum Coordinator at Tolon Museum of Modern Art in Bishkek. In 2025, she founded Qyimyl, an independent art collective supporting emerging artists and contemporary art initiatives in Kyrgyzstan. Her recent exhibitions include 3WORLD at Tolon Museum of Modern Art and group exhibitions with Qyimyl.

This project is realised in cooperation with and with the support of the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs as part of TRANS STANS, a collaboration with Weltmuseum Wien.