Dancing Through Life

The OK is dedicating a comprehensive exhibition to Carola Dertnig. The show spans her career from her early works created in New York to her most recent pieces. The artist lives and works in Vienna and has been leading the Department of Performative Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna since 2006. Linz holds a special place in her biography, as her studies in dance and gymnastics at the former Bruckner Conservatory marked the beginning of an intense engagement with her own body, which also became a starting point for her artistic development. Dertnig creates performative works in the context of visual art, encompassing both live performances in public spaces—such as in her slapstick videos—and visual works like drawings, collages, and photographs.Movement and corporeality are central to her work—from the remote-controlled dance sequences in Dancing with Remote to the stocking sculptures in all in all lifelong red tights. These red tights are not just material but a recurring symbol of resistance and transformation. They are closely linked to the True Stories, especially Stranger and An Exil, which explore themes of otherness, belonging, and performative identity. In the exhibition, visitors move through performative settings and stage-like situations, intuitively and playfully interacting with both the OK space and Dertnig’s oeuvre. Her work is shaped by an exploration of movement as language, as seen in her Feldenkrais-based pieces, as well as by an in-depth engagement with the history and theory of performance art.In her feminist reinterpretation of Viennese Actionism (Lora Sana, 2005) or the performance Tanz Portrait Harald Kreutzberg – 10 Posen (2014), she develops new forms of historiography that give partly forgotten performers a new place in the presentShe is also known for her intergenerational projects, which include working with her mother’s archive, as well as cinematic portraits of three young women—one of whom is her daughter—including Everything’s There Already (2018) and Donauspuren, digitale Weite und andere Dinge (2019).As part of an installation-based stage setting, the latest piece in this trilogy, Blinking Forward (2024), will be presented for the first time in the exhibition.
Text: Michaela Seiser

Kuratorin / Curator : Michaela Seiser
Ausstellungsdesign / Exhibitiondisplay Christian Sturminger
Grafik: Dieter Auracher
Thanks to: Alfred Weidinger, Firma Wolford, Creametal, Akademie der bildenden Künste, Galerie CRONE und Gesellschaft der Freunde der bildenden Künste Wien