"Pacification"

NITSCH. A homage by Kata Oeschlägel

Kata Oelschlägel (*1996) is a Vienna-based performance and installation artist whose work navigates the intersections of body, action, and transformation. Identifying as a post-radical Viennese actionist, her practice draws from the traditions of Viennese Actionism without reviving it nostalgically. Instead, she translates its core impulses into a contemporary, progressive language. Her work challenges perceptions of ambiguity and invites audiences to confront existential themes such as death, corporeality, and identity—not through provocation, but through reflection.

Oelschlägels work concentrates on deconstruction and reconciliation, with an aesthetic that allows ambiguity and questions connotations. Clarity is not asserted but undermined. In place of radical gestures, fragments, lines, and materials emerge: traces of an action that unfold as a gentle invitation instead of a confrontation. Central elements such as blood, cuts, skin, and the human body itself are translated into sculptural processes. The act remains visible, but no longer as an immediate gesture; much more as its material resonance: in fabric, stone, canvas, and digital display.

The exhibition at the Nitsch Foundation explores the relationship between action and sculpture. Oelschlägel understands sculpture as an extension of action through space and time. At the Nitsch Foundation, corporeality, ritual, and form encounter one another in a new visual language. Oelschlägel unfolds an aesthetic that seeks to move rather than to shock – beyond clarity, right within the in-between.

As part of the exhibition, Kata Oelschlägel will stage the performance “Sewn Together” on Thursday, 13 November 2025.

The exhibition “Pacification” in the series of NITSCH. A homage by … is on display from 6 November 2025 until 31 January 2026 at the Nitsch Foundation.