Where Boundaries Blur

The works of MQ Artists-in-Residence Mira Gáberová, Marei Loellmann, and Mario Mu engage with intimate encounters, embodied memory, and the complex structures of their surroundings. In the works of these three artists, transitional spaces serve as situations in which boundaries become permeable, enabling shared experiences.

Mira Gáberová (born in 1979 in Lučenec, Slovakia) lives and works in Prague.In her artistic practice, Mira Gáberová explores the relationship between embodied experience and the transitional zones between private and public space. The theater curtain functions both as a central motif and as a striking metaphor for these threshold states and appears repeatedly in a series of video performances she developed over several years. Within this conceptual framework, the curtain becomes both a visual and a physical boundary. At this threshold, the artist engages with her own corporeality, its intimacy, and its public perception.

Mario Mu (born 1987, Croatia) lives and works in Berlin.Mario Mu’s artistic practice is grounded in virtual environments and their morphologies. He understands space as a platform shaped by the sociopolitical forces that influence our experience of embodiment, proximity, and belonging. These environments function both as the point of departure and as the medium for his videos, installations, prints, and collaborative projects.In earlier works, Mu incorporated not only digital media but also socially defined situations and environments, drawing on strategies derived from theater and live role-playing games (LARPs). In more recent works, he increasingly focuses on how images can construct and dissolve the boundaries between immersion and distance, opening up possibilities for imagining and experimenting with new forms of community, intimacy, and collective belonging.

Marei Loellmann lives and works in Berlin. At the heart of Marei Loellmann’s artistic practice lies an exploration of material, the body, time, and the social conditions of production. Her works are often created directly on site and are based on natural materials such as soil, river sediments, and ash, which she collects from specific landscapes. The work on view in the exhibition explores volcanic ash as a material of transition: Emerging from processes of radical transformation and destruction, it simultaneously points to what was, what is, and what is yet to come. The large-scale textile work consists of webbing straps embroidered with glowing green numerical codes and woven into a landscape with black strands wrapped in yarn. Over this lies a cotton textile treated with ash. The ash comes from the Tajogaite volcano in La Palma, which, during its 2021 eruption, buried entire buildings, roads, and agricultural land; at the same time, the eruption laid the foundation for new life. Loellmann contrasts this cyclical understanding of nature with the industrialized and capitalized world represented by numerical codes. Through the textile structure, she establishes a connection to the human body, which is entangled in these processes both biologically and culturally.

Curated by Viktor Čech and Elisabeth Hajek

In cooperation with tranzit.org/ERSTE Foundation