Ina Loitzl

Video and Textile Artist

“I am interested in dialogue, communication, and questioning our norms, boundaries, and taboos. I am convinced that engaging with art can transform us as human beings. Despite the flood of images, some can embed themselves magically into our long-term memory and never let go.”

Ina Loitzl works at the intersection of contemporary object art and—mostly feminist—activism. She frequently uses CUTOUTS: patterns cut freehand from bookbinder’s paper or leather and mounted on often oval panels. Her Ovaleskenoften incorporate internal and external sexual organs into floral-looking patterns. Sewn and padded objects in lacquer are sometimes associated by viewers with items from a sex shop.

Her fasting cloth for Klagenfurt Cathedral in 2023—a three-meter-long tongue in red lacquer with vulva-shaped papillae—sparked enormous discussion, far exceeding what the religious artist and the cathedral’s provost had anticipated, and led to online outrage against art in the cathedral. Similarly, her feminist procession Mostramus, addressing the role of women in the Catholic Church and the destigmatization of female body parts, moved from the cathedral to the secularized castle chapel in the MMKK – Museum of Modern Art Carinthia, where she installed a four-meter-tall vulva, her work Mandorla, complete with a halo.

http://inaloitzl.net/

Foto: Marko Lipus