Artist: Agnes Scherer

In her exhibitions and stage productions, Salzburg-based artist Agnes Scherer merges sculpture, painting, drawing, music, and performance to create multilayered object theatres. For "Curated by: Untold Narratives", she revisits the 'archive' of her own artistic practice to expand and recontextualize a piece about Marie Antoinette originally created in 2019. This scenographic installation, composed of painterly and sculptural elements, uses events from the life of the iconic French queen as a pretext to explore the ongoing revival of feudal structures. Scherer portrays Marie Antoinette both at the guillotine and amidst her yearning for a pastoral life. Her paintings feature the „Hameau de la Reine“, a fully functional farm village, recently restored by Dior, which the queen had constructed in the gardens of Versailles in 1783 to playfully explore a rustic lifestyle together with selected guests.

In contrast to glorifying perspectives on the French Revolution, "Strawfires" offers an ambiguous portrait of these events. The title refers on the one hand to the recurring overwriting of revolutionary agendas by neo-feudal demands for power, privilege, and profit maximization, which extends into the present day. On the other hand, the title refers to a socially romantic desire for a fairer existence within the broader societal context, a desire that is only casually flirted with through the facades of simple lifestyles, detox rituals, or regular retreats to remote 'cabins' for mental and physical cleansing.

Eva Birkenstock