Maruša​ Sagadin

Vienna-based artist Maruša Sagadin, known for her quirky sculptural interventions, was invited by Kunsthaus Graz to design a site-specific intervention for the forecourt of the building. The design for a multi-part, expansive sculpture was created in response to the surroundings and the building. It consists of granite stones with wooden seats, offers space and humour and is invitingly painted in bright colours. For the urban space, the temporary project combines sculptural elements that, on the one hand, mark the building and its contents and, on the other, offer passers-by and people waiting to sit down and engage with the location.

The centrepiece of the work is a sculptural, tubular hanging device with an oversized, approx. 1 m high, yellow-painted pear. Speak more truth, eat more fruit quotes a song by rapper Speech Debelle and is both an invitation and a reference to the artist's roots, which combine elements of street art, pop, comic and hip-hop culture. Sagadin's work breaks with established codes with relish, sensitively revealing social mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion in urban space.