Michaela Moscouw

Michaela Moscouw (born 1961 in Vienna) is an artist and photographer from Austria.

Life and work Michaela Moscouw attended an arts and crafts school and trained at Höhere Graphische Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt from 1976 to 1981. She first worked as a freelance graphic designer, co-founded Fotogalerie Wien in 1983 and developed her own artistic work in an autodidactic manner while being involved in the gallery's activities.

Maria Venzl, curator of the comprehensive exhibition “Present Absent” 2023 in Linz, divides Moscouw's artistic development into four distinct phases. An abstract, graphic early work, which was completely destroyed by the artist in the early 1980s. Moscouw then turned to the camera and her early photographic work, in which she staged her own body in interior shots inspired by Viennese Actionism. up to 40 times in a row for self portraits.

Artist and curator Josef Wais (Fotogalerie Wien) on how Moscouw's works are connected to the history of art: “Formally, Michaela Moscouw makes uninhibited use of the history of art [... but she] cannot exclude herself from her work; her entire personality, physical and emotional, is always involved in the creative process. This process of opening up - an almost masochistic process of showing and revealing oneself - seduces us to rummage around or look away." In a text accompanying one of her books Robert F. Riesinger locates the “female body” as always in the center of Moscouw's (early) photographs, but this is “not [...] in the place of the feminine [...], but [undergoes] the most varied and diverse transformations and transcodings.” One of the main characteristics of Moscouw's photographs is “the play with different roles, the testing of different body states and images”.

In her photography, Moscouw resists “conventional definitions and expectations,” she uses unusual methods of image production such as “faulty, inexpensive, easily available material and cheap equipment”; she distances herself from the "perfect form," instead of producing and archiving "valuable" works of art, she prefers to reuse and rework Arte Povera materials and older photographic works: "garbage pictures" have the same right to exist as "good pictures," the artist is quoted as saying.

Works by Michaela Moscouw can be found in these public collections: OÖ Landessammlung, FOTOHOF>ARCHIV, Spallart Collection, Collection of Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien, Collection of Bund Österreich, Collection of Museum der Moderne Salzburg.

Exhibitions Solo (selection) 2023 MICHAELA MOSCOUW. Anwesend Abwesend. Francisco Carolinum, Linz 2019 michaela moscouw. aus der deponie der fotografie, Fotogalerie Wien 2016 Michaela Moscouw. MUSTER - Fotos und Videos, 1991 - 2012, FOTOHOF>ARCHIV 2012 uubeurhaoupt, curated by Anja Manfredi, Ve.Schh, Vienna 2005 Der soziografische Blick 11: Michaela Moscouw, Kunstraum, Innsbruck 1999 Iconomanie, Rencontres d'Arles Michaela Moscouw in conversation with Rainer Iglar and Michael Mauracher, 1999. First published in French in: Vive les modernités. Rencontres Internationales de la photographie, Arles, Actes Sud, ISBN 2-7427-2319-6; later re-published in English and German in: let's twist again. Performance in Wien von 1960 bis heute, edited by Carola Dertnig, Stefanie Seibold, Gumpoldskirchen/Vienna: D.E.A. Buch- und Kunstverlag, ISBN 3-901867-16-3

Awards 2014 Preis der Stadt Wien für Bildende Kunst [Award of the City of Vienna for Fine Arts] 2011 Österreichischer Kunstpreis für Künstlerische [Austrian Award for Artistic Photography] 1997 Förderungspreis für Künstlerische Fotografie, Bundeskanzleramt Österreich [Promotion Award for Artistic Photography, Federal Chancellery of Austria]