MICHAELA MOSCOUW - Anwesend Abwesend / Present Absent

Self-staging, self-exposure, self-erasure - these are the themes that Michaela Moscouw (*1961) worked on uncompromisingly, excessively and memorably over three decades. Until the early 1980s, the Viennese artist painted abstract pictures, then she destroyed her entire oeuvre and filmed herself doing it. She thus changed medium and since then has exclusively used the means of photography. She obsessively pursued concepts and designs of an aestheticised body experience. For her self-stagings as a radical act and expression of personal emotionality, she acted like an actress rehearsing different roles, questioning gender-specific clichés and body images. She worked on the terrain of VALIE EXPORTS, Friederike Pezolds or Renate Bertlmanns. Today, Michaela Moscouw lives in seclusion in Vienna. Her works have been continuously destroyed, yet works by her have survived in public and private collections. The catalogue presents the preserved photographic work, from early large-format self-portraits in black and white to the colour images from the early 2000s. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Michaela Moscouw, Anwesend Abwesend, Francisco Carolinum, Linz from 10.02. - 14.05.2023