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Sandra Mujinga
Skin to Skin
Skin to Skin is Sandra Mujinga’s first museum show in Austria. The Norwegian artist takes over the central exhibition space of Belvedere 21 with an expansive installation combining sculpture, sound, and reflection. Repetition becomes an artistic strategy to explore (in)visibility, community, and transformation.
The exhibition Sandra Mujinga. Skin to Skin is organized by the Belvedere and the Stedelijk Museum.
Curated by Axel Köhne (Belvedere) and Melanie Bühler (Stedelijk).
Assistant Curator: Carla Wiggering
Belvedere 21
Opening Hours
Address
Arsenalstraße 1, 1030 Vienna
Getting thereIn cooperation with
The Exhibition
At the heart of the installation stands a mysterious group of 55 identical, larger-than-life figures—ghostly, hybrid beings that resemble avatars, deep-sea creatures, or apparitions from another dimension. They embody both protection and kinship, fragility and power. Drawing on animal survival strategies such as camouflage and nocturnality, as well as ideas from science fiction, Afrofuturism, and posthumanism, Sandra Mujinga creates an atmosphere where multiplication becomes a strategy for disappearance.
With her work, Mujinga poses fundamental questions about visibility, identity, and transformation, guided by her keen interest in bodies and skin. Mirrored objects heighten visual multiplication and sensory stimulation, while an electronic soundtrack adds an acoustic dimension to this seemingly speculative world. Inspired by Naomi Klein’s concept of the doppelgänger, Skin to Skin explores how repetition and abstraction allow bodies to resist clear interpretation—opening up new spaces for speculative resistance amid (digital) control and surveillance. Skin to Skin invites us to imagine fluid, hybrid, and defiant forms of existence beyond conventional categories—poetic, political, and radically contemporary.
Biography
Sandra Mujinga (born 1989 in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo) is an artist, DJ, and musician. She lives and works in Oslo.
Mujinga's multidisciplinary practice encompasses sculpture, video, performance, sound, and text. In her works, she addresses the visibility of Black bodies in public space and explores the potential of opacity as a form of agency.
Mujinga was awarded the Preis der Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin in 2021. Her works have been shown at the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, the Venice Biennale (2022), and the Yokohama Triennale (2024), among others. Notable solo exhibitions include Time as a Shield (Kunsthalle Basel, 2024), Fleeting Home (MdbK Leipzig, 2023), I Build My Skin With Rocks (Hamburger Bahnhof, 2022–23), and Worldview (Swiss Institute New York, 2021).
