Elke Auer | Artists in Residence | Kamov Residency

Photo: Philipp Haupt

• Biography
• The Project
• Organized by

• Elke Auer

  Elke Auer was born in 1980 in Graz and grew up in a three-generation household on an apple farm. She studied Visual Media Design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

  Since graduating in June 2005, she has been working as a freelance artist in various contexts within the visual arts, as well as a video artist and stage designer in theatre. Together with Eva Jantschitsch and Esther Straganz, she published the zine Cuntstunt, and from 2012 to 2017 she served on the board of the Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ).

  In 2006 she received the Johanna Dohnal Prize for her diploma project Working on Fire (in collaboration with Esther Straganz), and in 2015 she was awarded a state scholarship for visual arts. Residency grants have taken her to London, Rome, São Paulo, New York, and most recently Athens. She has exhibited in Vienna, Graz, Linz, Salzburg, Athens, Berlin, Belgrade, Bilbao, Bangkok, Ljubljana, Krakow, São Paulo, and London, and has curated several group exhibitions at the VBKÖ.

  Her artistic practice engages with feminist, emancipatory, and intersectional theories, focusing on the political dimensions of contemporary constructions of identity and ways of life. She often works with found materials, language, and borrowed or recycled images and motifs from (art) history.

  Her projects in recent years have dealt with reproductive labour, vulnerability and shame, resistant tongues and leaky vessels, biopolitics and hormones, Neolithic gender representations, as well as the tensions between contemporary feminisms and constructions of masculinity, and their impact on political landscapes.

  She lives with her child (born 2022) and her partner in Vienna.

• The spectre in the museum or, looking at what is not there

  07.04.-07.06.2026.

  THE SPECTRE IN THE MUSEUM OR, LOOKING AT WHAT IS NOT THERE
  Cartography of the Absences in the Collection of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka

  This research-based art project investigates the collection of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMSU) in Rijeka through a feminist lens, focusing on the absences within its extensive holdings of post-war Yugoslav art.

  The project will not attempt to fill these absences but rather to frame them as spaces of potential. By combining archival research, collection analysis, and feminist art practices, it understands absence not as a deficiency but as a generative space.

  The artistic outcome will take the form of an installation that reframes and recontextualizes MMSU’s holdings through subtle interventions such as re-curating, re-captioning, and juxtaposing existing works with absent or imagined ones, as well as a small print publication that blends research, documentation, and poetry, serving as an alternative catalogue of absence.

  The residency is supported by the Cultural Department of the Styrian Regional Government.

  

• Museum of modern and contemporary art

  → www.mmsu.hr

  Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka (HR) - MMSU

   

  MMSU in Rijeka founded in 1948, in its long tradition offers a committed support to innovative ways of approaching, producing and presenting art. From its very beginning the Museum has been building reputation of one of the most prominent visual art institutions in Croatia, entrusted with presentation of Croatian artists at prestigious international art events such as: Venice Biennial 1962, 1997, 2007, 2010, Sao Paolo Biennial 1967, 2004 etc. 

  The Museum rounds its programming around visual art education, parallel to different modes of exhibition concepts that address new discursive possibilities and transform it into a place of inspiration, idea exchange and active participation. Under the motto openness, creativity & engagement, together with artistic, cultural and community organizations, Museum furthers visual arts research, collaboration and exchange within the region and internationally, while aspiring to reach increasingly diverse audiences and to work in a close relationship with the community.

  Museum’s collection offers a diverse range of artistic visions with over 8,000 artworks dated from the end of the 19^th century to the present day. From 2017 Museum is located at new address, Krešimirova 26c, in ex-industrial complex Rikard Benčić. Since then, some important exhibitions were organized at MMSU in the framework of the pre-program and program of Rijeka 2020 - European Capital of Culture, i.e. Tomislav Gotovac: Crisis Anticipator - Don't Ask Where We're Going (2017), Vlado Martek: Exhibition with Many Titles and Goran Petercol: Don't Worry About Poetics, They Will Arrive on Their Own in 2019 and David Maljković: With the Collection in 2020..