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Maria Hahnenkamp
Maria Hahnenkamp (b. 1959, Eisenstadt) has been working with, through, about, and against the medium of photography and its specific dispositives since the late 1980s.
As an artist’s artist, she is known for her media-critical and feminist artistic work over the past decades and as a defining figure in Austrian contemporary art history. In the spring of 2025, the Belvedere 21 will host the first major institutional solo exhibition dedicated to Maria Hahnenkamp.
The exhibition’s central themes are void, space, craftsmanship, and ornamentation. With a selection of around 100 works, the solo show includes photographs, works on photographic paper, slide projections, video works, installations, and in-situ wall drillings in an architectural setting by Walter Kräutler.
The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue (German/English) published by Walther König, and designed by Martha Stutteregger, with contributions by Clara Bouveresse, Rainer Fuchs, Ruth Horak, Christin Müller, and Stefanie Reisinger.
Curated by Stefanie Reisinger.
Assistant curator: Ana Petrović
Belvedere 21
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Arsenalstraße 1, 1030 Vienna
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The Artist
Self-taught, Hahnenkamp first encountered professional photography in the late 1970s through commercial art. She gained technical know-how and skills in working with photographic reproduction media through hands-on experience in print shops and advertising agencies. Hahnenkamp began to critically examine what she had learned during the day, editing its content, turning its form inside out, and deconstructing it: “...and the art came at night.”
Through her everyday use of advertising images, Hahnenkamp recognizes photography as a medium and strategy for the violent appropriation of the female body by the male gaze and, more broadly, as a medium of superficial commercialization. In her artistic practice, she seeks ways to challenge traditional photography, question its conventions of production and presentation, and critique social norms in the representation of women with subversive radicality. The artist consistently strives to “push back against superficiality,” rejecting any form of media voyeurism and seeking to “make the unconscious—what lies beneath—visible.”
