MQ Artist-in-Residence Matea Kovač & Ana Maria Maravić: Opportune Moment

Opening: Fr 30.05.2025, 16.30h CinemAperitivo hosted by Vienna Shorts and ASIFA Austria | MQ Raum D
Exhibition duration: 15.05. – 24.08.2025 | ASIFAKEIL | MQ Showrooms

Can you imagine an opportune moment? In Greek mythology, Kairos, the god of the opportune moment, symbolizes a chance — that brief cut in time when something can change. We’ll most likely imagine that moment as something positive. In this exhibition, two worlds — sculpture and drawing, mythology and intimacy — merge into one contemplation: What can an opportune moment truly represent?

In the animated film Y, Matea Kovač explores the intimate boundaries of relationships through a line — when the line stops connecting and begins to divide. Her Kairos is a moment of realization — that something must end in order to protect the self. What if the purpose of an opportune moment isn’t necessarily to create or preserve, but to decide that something can — and should — end? An opportune moment isn’t easy, but it’s crucial.

Ana Maria Maravić through sculptures of Kairos with large feet for quick movement and mischievous, playful faces, portrays happiness in an unrecognizable form. Opportune moments sometimes play with us, tease us, and test our ability to notice them. We often recognize them as opportune only with the passage of time.

Matea Kovač’s film Y won the Newcomer’s award at the Animation Avantgarde competition at the Vienna Shorts festival 2024 and with it an Artist Residency at the MuseumsQuartier Vienna.
Jury statement:
"In this film, the artist invites us on a poetic and sensual journey, a story told with delicate lines and a strong voice. For its sincere and beautifully drawn observations, our Jury Prize for Best Newcomer goes to the film Y by Matea Kovač."

MQ Curator-in-Residence Kamogelo Walaza about the exhibition:

"Opportune Moment” invites viewers to reflect not only on moments seized, but also on those missed, misread, or misunderstood.
Can we recognize the right moment as it arrives — or only in hindsight? In Greek mythology, Kairos is the god of the opportune moment: a fleeting sliver of time in which change becomes possible. Often imagined as a gateway to something positive, the concept also asks us to consider: what if the most crucial opportunities are not about creation, but about letting go?
This exhibition brings together two practices — drawing and sculpture, mythology and personal experience — in a shared meditation on the nature of timing, awareness, and transformation.
In her animated film “Y”, Matea Kovač explores the fragile thresholds of intimacy through the simplicity of a line: a line that once connected now divides. Her vision of Kairos is not triumphant, but sobering — a moment of clarity in which the necessity of ending becomes undeniable. Here, the opportune moment is an act of self-preservation, a quiet decision to withdraw in order to remain whole.
Kovač’s film Y received the Newcomer’s Award at the 2024 Animation Avantgarde competition at the Vienna Shorts Festival, alongside an artist residency at MuseumsQuartier.
Conversely, Ana Maria Maravić’s sculptural interpretations of Kairos depict the god with oversized feet — ready for swift movement — and faces full of mischief. Her figures embody Kairos not as a solemn force but a playful one, evoking how opportunities often disguise themselves as disruptions. In these works, timing becomes a game of recognition: moments that test our readiness, our instincts, and our courage to act — or to wait.