mixed up with others before we even begin

The exhibition "mixed up with others before we even begin" investigates models of thinking and working that reconcile different, sometimes contradictory entities within contemporary visual culture. Current artistic positions enter into a dialogue with selected works from the mumok collection and objects from the collections of the Natural History Museum Vienna to foreground the hybrid as an effective tenet, not only in artistic but also societal and political realms.

"mixed up with others before we even begin" celebrates the historical-cultural processes of creolization as a mode of world-making that has always been there. It encompasses moments of encounter and friendly gathering as well as those of collision, too. The exhibition features works that open perspectives to postcolonial histories of diversity, to satirical transliteration, queer folklore, and collective feminist rituals, to the molecular borders of the human body and its entanglements with science and technology.

Artists: Leilah Babirye, Mariana Castillo Deball, Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčová, Nilbar Güreş, Nicolás Lamas, Slavs and Tatars

The exhibition is accompanied by a symposium in cooperation with IFK International Research Center for Cultural Studies | University of Art and Design Linz in Vienna. Under the title "The Virtues of Vulnerability. Societies in Times of Trouble" the symposium examines concrete sites and problem zones where the vulnerable fabric of life becomes political and/or promising strategies of dealing with the bruises of extractivist projects rise to the surface. It will introduce and discuss lines of thought and diverse practices that can turn apparent deficiencies into assets.

Symposium curated by Karin Harrasser and Franz Thalmair

Curated by Franz Thalmair