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Magic in Vienna, 2024. Public art installation commissioned by Museums Quartier Wien, Vienna, Austria. Curated by Verena Kaspar-Eisert.
At the invitation of the MuseumsQuartier, queer artist Luciana Pinchiero has created this new work to mark International Pride Month.
Pinchiero is interested in deconstructing prevailing patterns in historiography and representations of the present, especially those dictated by the male gaze.
The title "Magic in Vienna" is a reference to the romance novel of the same name by Betty Neels, published in 1985. Romance novels are aimed at a broad, heterosexual, female audience and offer a fantasy world. This genre is often characterized by patriarchal norms and heteronormativity. The book covers are designed accordingly.
The artist has taken the covers of such books and used them to create collages with images of historical sculptures from the collections and from the façade of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, thus making the idea of queer magic in Vienna visible.
“I wanted to bring together different moments in history, with a diversity of aesthetics and expressions of sexuality. As a queer artist, I aim to offer a visual narrative in which binary and heteronormative assumptions of gender and expressions of love are challenged, and in which a whole range of manifestations of love are celebrated,” the artist explains.