SECTIONS: Tensions & SPECTĀRE / Spectāre
SECTION: Tensions
Curated by Hana Ostan-Ožbolt-Haas
Tensions, the curated section on the main stage of the Festspielhaus Bregenz, spotlights (large-scale) sculptural works by seven female artists. This selection includes established figures but also—and predominantly—emerging artists—born in the late 1980s and early 1990s—who work primarily in sculpture or integrate it with other media in a transdisciplinary manner. Employing diverse materials and approaches to sculpture, their practices reflect on the contemporary production of material culture, examine embodied collective tensions, and navigate the artists’ existence within complex, often conflicting relationships. The selected artists interrogate the power dynamics that shape the present moment and influence imaginaries of potential futures.
In 2022, the term permacrises was declared the word of the year by Collins English Dictionary. In 2025—a year that already feels unnervingly long—the world continues to grapple with geopolitical instability, environmental disasters, the rise of fascist regimes, and widespread societal insecurity. We are trapped in a state of ‘polycrises’, characterised by constant, ongoing tension. Like language, art is a reflection of the world, indicative of the times. How, then, do these crises and tensions—whether societal or personal—manifest in the works of the presented artists? How do they materialise—particularly in sculptural form—loss and resistance, all while emphasising both the fragility and persistence of the structures that bind us together?
Tensions presents, among others, works by female artists who either originate from the broader Central and Eastern European region or have close connections to it. Born in Kosovo (Doruntina Kastrati), Slovakia (Denisa Lehocká), the Czech Republic (Eva Koťátková), and Hungary (Zsófia Keresztes), as well as in Germany to Albanian parents (Anna Ehrenstein), they all come from countries that remain underrepresented in the international art market. Two artists were born in Portugal (Andreia Santana) and Taiwan (Chin Tsao) and live in Vienna.
Numerous new productions were created specifically for STAGE Bregenz, alongside contributions from two artists presenting works that resonate with their recent solo showcases at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024). By engaging with the context of the central theatre and concert stage, utilising its infrastructure, and presenting monumental sculptural works, Tensions establishes a unique environment that transcends the conventional art-fair format.
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Hana Ostan-Ožbolt-Haas is a Slovenian-born, Vienna-based freelance curator and author. From 2019 to 2023, she served as the director of the ULAY Foundation. In recent years, she has curated exhibitions for the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Curated by Festival (Vienna), HOW Art Museum (Shanghai), and Salzburger Kunstverein (Salzburg). As a writer, she contributes to Artforum and has been published in Frieze and ArtReview.
SECTION: SPECTĀRE / Spectāre
Curated by Camille Regli
THE DIRECTOR
In the theatre, it is not the characters who act in the play. In the theatre, it is the actors who perform it. As for the characters, they exist only in the manuscript (he points to the Prompter’s box) – when there is one!
THE FATHER
Precisely! Since there is no manuscript, and since you have the extraordinary opportunity, ladies and gentlemen, to see these characters alive before you...
THE DIRECTOR
Oh, that’s a good one! Do you mean to say you would do everything yourselves? Act the play, present yourselves directly to the audience?
THE FATHER
Yes, exactly as we are.
THE DIRECTOR
Well then, I assure you, that would make for quite a peculiar spectacle!
–– Excerpt from Six Characters in Search of an Author,
Luigi Pirandello (1921)
In Luigi Pirandello’s play “Six Characters in Search of an Author” (1921), six archetypal characters seek to stage their own story, blurring the lines between reality and fiction, performance and identity. The struggle to define their role in the play raises the question: who determines what is real and what is performed? Aren’t we all merely part of an absurd play?
Spectāre addresses the inherent theatricality of STAGE Bregenz’s setting, revealing the mechanisms that shape, activate and perform space. Structured with curtains and theatre lighting, Spectāre reconfigures space, operating as a mise-en-scène and encouraging spectators to cross thresholds that traditionally separate performance from reality. The term itself – derived from the Latin spec-, meaning ‘to observe' – foregrounds the act of looking, prompting an active wandering in space and a concealed feeling of being staged. Reflecting on the codes and ambiguities that oppose the black box and the white cube, this section poses a test, ultimately revealing that no space is ever truly neutral.
Situated within the so-called ‘Seitenbühne’—a vast open floor that erases the boundary between audience and performance—Spectāre challenges our role and position as spectators, implying that, by stepping on stage, we are not merely positioned in front of the works but within them. In his seminal essay “Theatre of the Oppressed” (1974), Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal introduces the concept of the ‘spect-actor’, rejecting the notion of passive spectatorship. Instead, he insists that the audience owns the agency to alter and reinterpret the narrative unfolding in front of them.
Bringing together a selection of artists who come into dialogue with the notion of performativity—through language, sound, film, painting, sculpture, props, and characters— Spectāre provokes questions on the performative dimensions of objects, bodies and space, and blurs the lines between the observer and the observed. Additional time-based activations by artists momentarily disrupt the section’s framework in favour of a transient experience that resists being fixed.
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Camille Regli is an independent curator. She’s the co-founder and co-director of KRONE COURONNE, a centre for contemporary art in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland, and a member of the curatorial group Collectif Détente. She has collaborated with institutions such as Kunsthaus Biel/Centre d‘art Bienne, FMAC (Collection d’art contemporain Genève), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and Centre d‘art contemporain Genève.
Photo of Camille Regli (left) – Antoine Berchier // Photo of Hana Ostan-Ožbolt-Haas (right) – Credit Olivia Henningsson
