Our Guest: XENOS. Democraties in Danger

‘We have learnt to live with each other’ is written on Gerhardt Moswitzer's memorial on Europaplatz in Graz - in memory of the bloody February battles, which are celebrating their 90th anniversary this year. Back then, people with different ideologies were at odds with each other. While some saw it as their duty to protect their republic, others wanted to defend their understanding of their homeland. As we know, this violent conflict between different ideologies ended in Austrofascism and the seizure of power by National Socialism. Now, some eight decades after the end of the Second World War, democracies around the world are once again increasingly under threat. Authoritarian regimes and powerful leaders are calling many socio-political achievements into question or even suppressing them. In several EU countries, far-right and right-wing populist movements are on the rise and a new Trump presidency is looming in the USA. The same is true in Central and South America, Asia and Africa, where right-wing populist policies promise new salvation. The war in Ukraine brought mass killing back to Europe after several decades and the war in Gaza is also opening up rifts here in the ‘West’.

In the art project Democracies in Danger, curated and organised by XENOS - Verein zur Förderung der soziokulturellen Vielfalt (in cooperation with KIÖR, Kunsthaus Graz and other institutions of Graz), nine international visual artists and artist collectives, who repeatedly take a critical look at socio-political conditions in their work, take a visible stand from their specific perspective at nine locations in public space in Graz.

One of these locations is the forecourt of the Kunsthaus Graz. Here, Zoncy Heavenly challenges in her text-based mixed media project with symbols of the democracy movement in Myanmar the meanings of the patriarchal proverbs that often reinforce gender stereotypes and limit women's potential. Her aim is to reverse or counter-argue and reclaim the potential, ability, power, and wisdom, which have always been with womankind, because: A great wise woman can even plug a star in the sky.  

“Growing up as a Burmese literature enthusiast since middle school, I wondered why no proverbs encouraged females to uplift their souls or reach their goals. Instead, many force Burmese women to conform to cultural values within their society, from daily etiquette to standards of religious conduct. Four generations of extreme patriarchal military regimes in Myanmar devalue women's contributions and have never given room for progress and change in contemporary Burmese society.” (Zoncy Heavenly)

Zoncy Heavenly, *1987 in Kaw Thoung, Myanmar, is an interdisciplinary artist who focuses on immateriality in body-based arts that explores the intangible aspects of the human body and its relation to art, the tangibility of collective trauma, and contemporary concepts in phenomenology.

Democracies in Danger, a project in public space Graz by XENOS and KiöR, in co-operation with Kunsthaus Graz