We would like to send our congratulation to Austrian Artist Xenia Hausner, who's having an exhibition at the National Archaeological Museum of Mantua.
The history of mankind is a history of migration. With DISPLACED – STORIES IN MOTION art meets archaeology, by offering two different points of view observing this precarious human condition.
On the one hand, there are Xenia Hausner’s paintings, snapshots of farewells framing faces and outstretched arms of woman and men looking out the windows of a leaving train. The vivid but cold colors add troubled anguish to the scene: our collective memory evokes well known images of the European twentieth century exodus and, by association, the contemporary dramas of the arriving refugees. On the other hand, archaeology tells the story of the Mantua territory, which for thousands of years has been the crossroads of different cultures, of men and women on the move: merchants travelling across Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, the Celts and the Longobards, looking for a new land and a new start.
Exhibition Duration
2019.5.18 – 2019.10.6
Venue
Ducal Palace Museum Complex
Italy National Archaeological Museum of Mantua
About the artist
Xenia Hausner (b. 1951 Vienna, Austria) was born into a family of artists. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. As of 1990 Xenia Hausner began concentrating on painting. People are at the center of her work. Her images are enigmatic, the situations she depicts ambiguous. Xenia Hausner’s large formatted works are societal descriptions, the situations purposely fragmentary are snapshots from daily life. In contrast to the classical portrait, the characters in her images are cast like actors in a play.