Lost Element

The video is a part of the research-based art project and an artistic investigation entitled Lost Element. Re-econstruction of the Witch and refers to the story of a Jewish woman sculptor Teresa Feodorowna Ries who lived in Vienna before 1938. The impulse to create this video-work was her sculpture entitled The Witch preparing herself for the Sabbath. The sculpture depicts a young woman looking straight into the viewer's eyes while smiling temptingly and maliciously while cutting her toenails with big scissors. This meaningful element of the sculpture – the hand with scissors disappeared in unclear circumstances and is still missing.

Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber, while working on her book on Austrian women artists of the turn of 19th and 20th centuries, found a few sculptures by Ries in the open space in Oberlaa, on the outskirts of Vienna. These sculptures had been vandalised, some parts were missing and others were covered in red paint. Among them were Eva and The Witch. This last was found with the face painted red, and the hand with its scissors missing... Trying to reconstruct what happened, I visited a few archives of the institutions in Vienna.

The fence behind which the video is displayed refers to the fenced-in place where the Ries sculptures were found. I also used it because of its ambivalent function - protection and oppression.

Exhibitions:

Lost Element. Re-construction of the Witch VBKÖ - Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichs, Vienna, Austria