AIR—ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

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AIR—ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

AIR – ARTIST IN RESIDENCE Niederösterreich
A multi-disciplinary program for architects, visual artists, musicians and writers.

In Zeiten der Globalisierung und angesichts der Geschwindigkeit kultureller Transfers ist es heute wichtiger denn je, einen von Toleranz und gegenseitigem Respekt geprägten interkulturellen Dialog zu suchen. Zur Förderung des internationalen Künstleraustausches hat das Land Niederösterreich daher ein Artist-in-Residence-Programm initiiert und an der Kunstmeile Krems – im Dachgeschoß einer ehemalig

en Teppichfabrik – fünf Atelierwohnungen und einen großen Gemeinschaftsraum errichtet. Um die Ateliers einer vielfältigen Nutzung zuzuführen, werden Stipendien an Kunstschaffende aus den Bereichen Bildende Kunst, Literatur, Architektur und Musik vergeben. Die Atelierwohnungen, in denen seit dem Jahr 2000 KünstlerInnen verschiedenster Nationalitäten zu Gast sind, dienen als temporäre Wohn- und Arbeitsstätten und ermöglichen nicht nur einen internationalen, sondern auch einen interdisziplinären Austausch. ENGLISH
Now, in the age of globalization and in the face of today’s fast-past-paced cultural knowledge transfer, it is more important than ever to strive for a cross-cultural dialogue based on tolerance and mutual respect. In order to promote international exchange, the federal state of Lower Austria has initiated an artist-in-residence program, for which it has set up five studio apartments and a large common room on the top floor of the former carpet factory within the Art Mile in Krems (Kunstmeile Krems). In order to ensure diversity and a vibrant atmosphere among the studios, the program will award its scholarships to artists from the fields of visual arts, literature, architecture and music. These studio apartments, which have housed artists from many different countries since 2000, serve as temporary living and working spaces and provide the opportunity for both international and interdisciplinary exchange.

31/05/2026

A seasoned visual storyteller, Adolphus Opara started out in photography by chronicling Nigeria, his birth country’s rich culture and heritage. His work is induced by the need to demystify personal childhood notions as regards Identity. As his career advanced, he delved into more conceptual territories, exploring nuanced social impacts of forced changes in the lived environment as necessitated by the Anthropocene.
His long-form documentary photography projects and keen interest in the plight of socially marginalised individuals led to his co-founding of Foundation for Art and Social Integration (FASI, a multi-disciplinary art foundation, through which several photography trainings around Africa have been completed in collaboration with artists and socially focused institutions. He co-created the Creative Photography Masterclass in visual storytelling (CPM) and have facilitated several photography trainings around Africa.
In 2023 he was appointed a collaborator with the West African Cluster of Harvard University's Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, a research project on Sea level Rise, Coastal Erosion and Urban flooding in the Gulf of Guinea.
In 2024 he was the research co-ordinator for ‘Colouring Lagos’ a Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) Critical Lab Research on the potential of landscape colors to mitigate the impacts of changing climates.
Opara served as grand jury of the Kuenyehia Prize for Contemporary Art along with Yinka Sonibare MBE, N’Gone Fall, Prof El Anatsui and Ablade Glover.

Citizenship: Nigeria
Residence: Session 4 (18.05.-21.06.2026)

📸 © Adolphus Opara

30/05/2026

Olusola Otori:

"As a multimedia artist based in Lagos, Nigeria, my practice is rooted in an exploration of power and spirituality with an aim to evaluating their collective impact on everyday life.
My digital medium explores the intersection of spiritualism and art.
Drawing upon my experience of visiting the Osun Oshogbo grove regularly for 10 years documenting spiritual spaces, I have created “The Sacred Art movement” a documentary film that sheds light on the lives and remarkable collaborative efforts of artists and artisans who dedicated their lives to the preservation of the Osun Oshogbo forest and cultural heritage under the supervision of Sussane Wenger, an Austrian born sculptor now recognized as the pioneer of the "New Sacred Art Movement" in Oshogbo, western Nigeria.

Several important themes are raised through this film including human values and ethics, environmental protection and social responsibility, the role of Susanne Wenger, an outsider, and the complex issues relating the coexistence of Art and traditional Yoruba
practices in the deeply Christian and Islamic context of Nigeria.

The documentary was filmed over a period of eight years Capturing over time, rare footage of the most important of the original artists of the New Sacred Art Movement including Adebisi Akanji and Sangodare Ajala. (both died recently) These two important artists trained the next generation of artists and artisans who continue restoring the art in the traditional way and in accordance with the significance and spirituality of the essence of the Shrines and sculptures. The thoughts of this legacy generation are beautifully communicated in this film."

Citizenship: Nigeria
Residence: Session 4 (18.05.-21.06.2026)

📸 © Olusola Otori

29/05/2026

Jelena Pejković:

"My architecture background strongly underpins my work. A robust line drawing typically grounds my pieces, while the subsequent layers of either black ink or paint and loose mark-making allow me to playfully emulate the qualities of the subject.

I often feature the ordinary, overlooked, peripheral, yet complex and visually striking subjects such as rural architecture, derelict buildings or neglected urban areas. Whether I am stacking the tight ink lines or combining and interlocking diverse other materials, my process is powerfully transformative: through sustained focus and attention, layers of complexity emerge even out of the most mundane structures. By the time my pieces are completed, I experience profound change. I gain knowledge and ever-expanding curiosity about the world, via the microcosm of the observed sites. My work is a call to the viewer to slow down and take time to witness and reflect on what often goes unnoticed in their environment. The hope is that by contemplating the potential of what is habitually dismissed the observer can experience a renewed sense of both agency and belonging."

Citizenship: Serbian
Residence: Session 4 (18.05.-21.06.2026)

📸 © Jelena Pejković

28/05/2026

Anna Knöller:

"My artistic practice is rooted in an in-depth engagement with the structures, rituals, and spatial
dimensions of legal systems. Through a research-based approach, I examine how law and justice
are performatively produced, represented, and experienced—both within institutional frameworks
and in the collective imagination.

At the core of my work lies extensive research, including court observations, expert interviews, and
studies of legal language and the architecture of judicial spaces. I translate these investigations
into performative installations, spatial interventions, and cartographic works that explore the relationships between power, space, and narrative.

A key element of my methodology is the development of visual and performative notations, which
serve as tools of translation. They render complex and abstract legal processes visible, readable,
and sensorially accessible. Complementing this, I work with materials such as textile and concrete,
whose physical and symbolic qualities—flexibility and weight, bodily proximity and institutional
permanence—materialize the conceptual concerns of my practice.

In collaboration with performers—including actors, dancers, and sound artists—I create immersive
situations in which these translations become activated within the exhibition space.
I am particularly interested in how physical environments shape our understanding of authority,
and how performative strategies can open these spaces to critique, reflection, and renegotiation.
Positioned at the intersection of scenography, social research, and visual art, my practice invites
dialogue on the visible and invisible mechanisms of law and justice."

Citizenship: Germany
Residence: Session 4 (18.05.-21.06.2026)

📸 © Oliver Sold

27/05/2026

Karl Rühmann spent his childhood in Yugoslavia. As a teenager, he emigrated to the United States, but after a few years he returned to Europe to study German studies, Hispanic studies, and general literary studies in Zagreb and Münster.
After completing his studies, he initially worked as a language teacher in Switzerland and Denmark before moving into the publishing industry in the late 1990s.

In 2006, he founded the licensing agency “books&rights” as well as the consulting agency “Plot & Story Rühmann.” He also taught publishing studies and translation at SAL, the School of Applied Linguistics.

Karl Rühmann lives in Zurich as a freelance writer and literary translator. Until 2018, he mainly wrote children’s books and radio plays; since then, he has focused primarily on novels for adults.
His novel Der Held was nominated for the Swiss Book Prize in 2020. In 2025 Matija Katun und seine Söhne was published (both rüffer & rub).

www.karl-ruehmann.com
https://www.instagram.com/karl_ruehmann/

Citizenship: Switzerland
Residence: Session 4 (18.05.-21.06.2026)

📸 © Franz Noser

27/04/2026

Niederösterreich, Hans & Me
Oder wie ich versuchte, die Postmoderne zu lieben.

Präsentation Wandcollage

Di, 28.04.2026, 18:00 Uhr

Walter Zschokke-Bibliothek - ORTE
Steiner Landstraße 3, Krems

Zu unserer Einladung nach Niederösterreich schreibt Tom Korn: Ein ganzes Künstlerleben lang habe ich es geschafft, postmoderne Architektur zu ignorieren, doch neulich war die Geduld zu Ende. AIR – ARTIST IN RESIDENCE Niederösterreich und ORTE in Krems boten die Möglichkeit, mich mehrere Wochen lang um den Elefanten im Raum zu kümmern, wozu ich mit offenen Augen und gezückter Kamera das Bundesland bereiste. Zusätzlich suchte ich in der künstlerischen Auseinandersetzung mit dem Werk Hans Holleins Inspiration und Verständnis. Doch was genau sehe ich da eigentlich? Eklektizistische An- und Umbauten in konsumoptimierten Gewerbegebieten – eine Art „Las Vegas für alle“? Häuser, deren Identität sich über die Wahl der richtigen Designer-Haustür definiert? Oder High-End-Architektur, die sich mit kecken Ausstülpungen aus edlen Materialien selbst kommentiert? - Ist die Postmoderne am Ende bloß eine Sonderform von Architektenhumor aus den 1990er Jahren?

Das künstlerische Ergebnis dieser zehnwöchigen Annäherung ist in Krems zu sehen: eine Wandcollage aus über 100 Einzelteilen. Come and see!

Die Teilnahme ist kostenfrei. Der Raum ist barrierefrei.
Um Anmeldung unter https://rebrand.ly/35otic7 wird gebeten.
Es wird darauf hingewiesen, dass bei der Veranstaltung Fotos gemacht und zum Zweck der Öffentlichkeitsarbeit sowie der Dokumentation verwendet werden.

Mehr zum Künstler https://tomkorn.de/

📸 © Poster von Tom Korn

21/04/2026

Anna Schütten works at the intersection of visual and acoustic art. She listens to sites and spaces and records their seemingly abstract patterns to turn them into starting points for a potential music. In her site-specific installations and performances, she transforms the acoustic properties of the exhibition venues and shifts the focus to the marginally perceptible, such as the biophonic rhythms of photosynthesis beneath the sound-absorbing surface of water or the geometry of electromagnetic interferences.

In addition to solo and group exhibitions, her artistic practice consists of interdisciplinary and cooperative approaches. She is part of Simultanhalle Köln, the grapefruits zine and Kollektiv a. a. O.. Anna Schütten studied Freie Kunst at the Kunstakademie Karlsruhe and Epistemic Media (Klang & Realität) at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf. For her work she received several awards and grants, e.g. the artist-in-residence at Global Forest e.V., St. Georgen (Schwarzwald), NEUSTARTplus Stipendium of Stiftung Kunstfonds and the research grant for music from the City of Cologne.

Citizenship: Germany
Residence: Session 3 (06.04.-10.05.2026)

📸 © Phillip Schulze

20/04/2026

Nenad Veličković was born in 1962 in Sarajevo, where he lives and works as an author, university lecturer in literature, and public intellectual.

His publications include several novels and short story collections, some of which have appeared in German, Italian, Hungarian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, English, Polish, Slovak, and Slovene translations. He has been involved as an initiator and editor in numerous literary journals and was also a co-owner of the literary workshop Omnibus.

Most recently published in German: Night Guests (2025, translated by Barbara Antkowiak) and The Father of My Daughter (2026, translated by Marija Ivanović), both published by Jung und Jung.

Citizenship: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Residence: Session 3 (06.04.-10.05.2026)

📸 © Imrana Kapetanovic

18/04/2026

Artist on Air

As part of the International Culture Festival Literature & Wine
with Nenad Veličković

Moderated by Reinhard Linke

Sunday, 19 April 2026, 10:30 a.m.
Artothek Niederösterreich, Krems

Information & reservations: www.literaturundwein.at
A cooperation between AIR – ARTIST IN RESIDENCE, Artothek Lower Austria, and Literaturhaus Lower Austria on the Kunstmeile Krems.

📸 © Imrana Kapetanovic

17/04/2026

The continuous examination of materials from shifting perspectives through the use of diverse media forms the starting point of Esra Oezen’s artistic practice, which is characterized by a reduced aesthetic and a conceptual approach. She works with visual media such as books, photographs, and television sets as both conceptual and material carriers of her work. Repetition and the notion of apparent disappearance are central themes in her practice.

With the support of the grant, Esra Oezen seeks to build upon her recent work "Blessed Pages", which was created during an artist‑in‑residency program in Nepal. In this work, she invited five performers to look at the pages of a book that had previously been blessed with ritual markings (tilaka) by a Hindu priest. Visitors to the exhibition could only observe the performers as they turned the pages or look over their shoulders. As in much of her work, the question arises: What am I actually seeing? Is it the book, the person viewing the book, or the overall image of the repeated gesture that carries meaning? Or is it the viewers themselves who follow the action?

During the residency, Esra Oezen aims to further explore these questions and continue engaging with the interplay of seeing, showing, and making visible—not only through theoretical reflection, but through performative practice. She plans a series of small‑scale actions and stagings that investigate different aspects of perception. Of particular interest is the moment when seeing itself becomes the focus—not as a passive act, but as a conscious one.

What meanings emerge when the viewer’s gaze encounters the performers’ actions? And how does what is shown shape the act of seeing? The project seeks to examine the interdependencies between these roles and to develop new possibilities of showing and seeing.

Citizenship: Germany
Residence: Session 3 (06.04.-10.05.2026)

📸 Esra Oezen

Adresse

Steiner Landstraße 3
Krems
3500

Telefon

+432732908010156

Webseite

http://www.air-noe.at/

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