MINNA ANTOVA
Artist. World-Space-Explorer. Interdisciplinary curator.
An artist who works to break down both spaces and the gender roles that play out within them. Born in Sofia, Bulgaria and educated in Sofia, Stockholm and Vienna, Minna Antova went on to study at the Masterschools for painting and sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, as well as philosophy and art history at the University of Vienna. Her main fields of work are the construction and deconstruction of cultural memory in public space, acculturation and the complexity of gender. A global asset to feminism, her varied exhibitions have been held in London, Madrid, Guatemala City, China, Poland and Bulgaria, among others. As national treasure her work is owned by the Federal Ministry for Arts and Culture, the City of Vienna, the Provincial Government of Lower Austria and Salzburg.
Minna Antova
“In her work, the astonished world-space archaeologist creates from her exploration of cross-generational public activities and myths, the Sacred and the Profane, present-day phenomena and visions of the future. The play with perspectives is causally built into her work and generates productive resistance.”
Maria-von-Magdala-Kapelle, Graz / © Minna Antova
Maria-of-Magdala-Chapel, Caritas Educational Centre for Social Professions, Graz
The only feminist chapel in Austria and the first chapel with an equal representation of Synagoga and Ecclesia. The texts are movable, the Cross can be deconstructed and reconstructed, a democratisation of Space and Faith at the same time.
DENK-MAL Marpe Lanefesch, Universitätscampus Wien / © Herbert Posch / image-editing Minna Antova
DENK-MAL Marpe Lanefesch, Universitycampus Vienna
Overall concept and remodelling of the remains of the former Synagogue in the Old General Hospital - which supplied the Narrenturm with electricity as a transformer station in post-war Austria - into a place of Cultural Memory.
DENK-MAL Marpe Lanefesch, Universitätscampus Wien / © Minna Antova
DENK-MAL Marpe Lanefesch, Universitycampus Vienna
The building is defined as a multi-dimensional place of meaning: A former Jewish place of worship; Last sacral architectural exemplar of a culturally and historically important Viennese architect; Site of the destruction of Jewish life; A testimony to the handling of places of Jewish history and their destruction after 1945.
DENK-MAL is used as a seminar space and sees itself as a place of remembrance, as well as a place of encounter and debate based on tolerance and respect. The "Memorial Book for the Victims of National Socialism at the University of Vienna 1938" is kept there since 2009.
SPECVLVM Kulturzentrum Frauenhetz Wien / © Minna Antova
SPECVLVM, artistic design of the communication space of the women's education centre Frauenhetz, Vienna.
From the Order of Public Space to the Symbolic Order: The female symbolic space does not exist analogue to the significance in the Absence: TRINITY - a counter-project with (self)irony.
“Democracy lies/is contained in our movements, in our actions, in our steps in the open space. Being cosmopolitans in solidarity: building our Polis into the Cosmos.”
