Dissolution is not disappearance
but a shifting, a dispersal, a survival in other forms: under the title You dissolve / It’s just another way you exist, the
University of Applied Arts Vienna will present works from its TransArts department at Vienna Contemporary 2025 from 11 to
14 September.
This exhibition gathers three artists, all graduates of the TransArts
department, whose works thematically explore the unstable space between presence and absence, remembering and erasure, materiality
and transformation, asking us to look closely at what dissolves but does not end, and to see how traces endure in language,
in space, and in form.
In
Range 2C00-2C5F,
Mariia Mihdieieva revives a forgotten
script, transforming the Glagolitic alphabet into a new typeface that slips between code and communication. Her work confronts
the politics of legibility—who can be read, who remains invisible—and reclaims space for voices at risk of dissolving into
silence.
Maja Bojanić’s
Yours is the world in which I move uninvited traces the
warmth of a body removed from the record books but not from memory. Through an infrared lens, the absent figure of her great-grandmother,
who was legally erased in 1992 during a state-sponsored deletion of thousands of Slovenian residents from the permanent residency
records, remains as a ghostly rhythm of life: as a residue of touch, breath and movement that refuses to disappear.
In
eternal 24/7,
Katharina Birkmann turns to the fragile figure of the snowman, a temporary being
perpetually collapsing into water. Between play and disappearance, ecology and culture, the snowman becomes a fragile monument—an
emblem of how we mourn endings yet still strive to hold them in place.
Read together, these three practices
articulate dissolution as a generative condition. Whether through scripts, bureaucratic erasures, or ephemeral figures, the
works are to be understood as a rejection of finality; they emphatically convey that what dissolves also has permanence.
The Angewandte at Vienna Contemporary 2025:11 to 14 september
Booth F87
Messe Wien
Trabrennstraße 7
1020 Vienna
TransArtsThe TransArts department (Institute of
Fine Arts and Media Art) operates at the intersection of art practice and art theory. Its teaching takes into account various
forms of artistic expression (visual arts, media art, literature, sound, architecture, performance, acting, etc.) that enter
into dialogue with one another, influencing and inspiring each other. In addition to the continuous support provided to students
by the management team, lectures and workshops are offered by visiting professors and internationally renowned personalities.
In this way, the diversity of contemporary art and art theory is conveyed in a memorable and practical manner. Continuity
and changing perspectives enable TransArts to offer a project-oriented, contemporary and at the same time forward-looking
artistic education.
Biographies:
Katharina Birkmann (1998 in Berlin,
DE) studied TransArts at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and Textile and Surface Design at Weißensee Academy of Art
Berlin. Her works have been shown at venues including Volkstheater Vienna, the Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ),
the Austrian National Library, and Savvy Contemporary, Berlin. In her artistic practice, she engages with material, temporality,
and histories across sculpture, film, and performance. She lives and works in Vienna.
https://katharinabirkmann.net/ Maja Bojanić (1997) is a visual artist whose practice explores the poetics and
politics of remaining. Her work interrogates whose narratives persist, whose fade away, and the forces that govern their visibility.
Her work has been presented internationally, including at Mumok Cinema, Vienna (2025); bb15, Linz (2025); Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana
(2024); VBKÖ, Vienna (2024); City Gallery of Nova Gorica (2024); aqb, Budapest (2022) and P74 Gallery, Ljubljana, where she
was twice shortlisted for the OHO Young Visual Artist Award (2023, 2024). She holds a BA in Sculpture from the Academy of
Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana (2020) and an MA in TransArts at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (2025).
http://majabojanic.info/
@_majabojanic
Mariia Mihdieieva (b. 2001, Ukraine) holds a BA in Graphic Design
from the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Fine Arts and an MA in Transdisciplinary Arts from the University of Applied
Arts Vienna. She works across textiles, painting, printmaking, design, and video, often combining handcraft with experimental
approaches. Her practice explores writing systems, languages, and migration in relation to memory, history, and technology.
Drawing on her own experience of displacement, she reflects on how scripts shape identity and cultural belonging, often resisting
easy translation and requiring active engagement from viewers. She has presented work at the Klima Biennale Wien (2024), the
Angewandte Festival (2023, 2025), and the International Eco Poster Triennial “The 4th Block” (2018).
@unreal.mari
