With the exhibition SUBJEKT.FRAU.OBJEKT, the MMKK takes a clearly feminist look at its collection, which ranges from the 19th century to the present day. While the holdings have always been heavily male-dominated, the current show specifically focuses on female artists whose works have often only been documented in fragments or not at all. The exhibition does not focus on a linear art history, but uses the existing works to tell a multifaceted story of being a woman - between subject and object, oppression and self-empowerment.
At the center are seven keywords that serve as thematic guidelines: Identity and role, body and body perception, oppression and exploitation, self-empowerment and emancipation, sexuality and desire, subject designs and empowerment as well as techniques with female connotations. Through this categorization, the female body becomes visible not only as a motif, but also as a carrier of diverse experiences and as an instrument of artistic debate. It becomes the gravitational center of the exhibition - a place where personal sensitivities, social constraints and emancipatory strategies meet.
Helga Druml, Bischöfin, 2006, oil on canvas, Courtesy Kunstsammlung des Landes Kärnten/MMKK, Photo: F. Neumüller
The presentation is accompanied by quotes from important feminists that open up the dialog between art and theory and deepen the philosophical-cultural dimension of the project. Visitors are invited to view the works not only as aesthetic objects, but also to reflect on the history and power relations behind their creation.
The exhibition proves that a feminist perspective and artistic quality are not mutually exclusive: Many of the works on display surprise with their originality, expressiveness and formal innovation. They document the power of female perspectives in a collection that has been male-dominated for decades. SUBJEKT.FRAU.OBJEKT makes visible what has long been overlooked and opens up a space in which female art and thinking about gender roles can be experienced in equal measure.
This show at the MMKK is a bold step towards shedding new light on the history of modern and contemporary art - with the clear aim of not only making the voice of women audible retrospectively, but also recognizing their artistic potential as an independent force.
September 25, 2025 to February 15, 2026
SUBJECT . WOMAN . OBJECT, 2025, exhibition views Museum of Modern Art Carinthia, photo: Arnold Pöschl
focus collection. MASTERWORKS
In three of the 14 exhibition rooms, the Museum of Modern Art Carinthia is showing a presentation of selected works from the art collection of the Province of Carinthia/MMKK. On display are paintings by the important protagonists of art in Carinthia in the 19th and early 20th centuries, from Biedermeier painting to early Modernism and Carinthian Expressionism, with a focus on female positions and the painters of the Viktringer Kreis.
September 25, 2025 to February 15, 2026
Renate Krammer: floating lines in the castle chapel
Renate Krammer, born in Klein St. Paul in Carinthia in 1956, works with reduced means and always concentrates on the essentials. Line and space are central to her artistic work. The basic pictorial element of the line, whose form and expressive power is almost inexhaustible, offers the artist an unlimited radius of action in its minimalist character. The potential of the formal vocabulary is tested and constantly developed further in a variety of series on and made of paper - from the surface into the space, from the disembodied line to the concrete element. In the site-specific installation in the castle chapel of the MMKK, Renate Krammer works with strings whose linear form, in their parallel juxtaposition to form wide strips and their interweaving, create a minimalist, transparent, ephemeral structure that floats in space. This measures the chapel space in generous sweeps, thus emphasizing its Euclidean and philosophical dimensions.
October 16, 2025 to February 15, 2026
https://mmkk.ktn.gv.at/
Renate Krammer, floating lines, 2025, acrylic glass, cotton, nylon, approx. 450 x 370 x 420 cm (detail), photo: Renate Krammer © Bildrecht, Vienna 2025
