Elaine Reichek: Now If I Had Been Writing This Story – A Feminist Art Exhibition

This exhibition showcases the work of artist Elaine Reichek, focusing on her critical and feminist interpretations of history through art and literature. It highlights her use of textile techniques and conceptual work to explore narratives of women in mythology and literature.

For over forty years, Elaine Reichek has been creating a critical and feminist reading of history through her art. Her analytical engagement with historical texts and visual representations from myths and literature, and her reflection on their societal function for cultural cohesion, are central to her practice, akin to Ariadne's thread guiding Theseus through the labyrinth. In her first solo exhibition in Austria, Reichek presents works from the past eleven years dedicated to the 'girls from Minos' – figures like Europa, Pasiphaë, Phædra, and Ariadne, whose tragic fates, though central to the narrative, are often relegated to the background in favor of male heroes. Reichek, however, places these women and their complexity at the forefront, compiling interpretations and representations from centuries and employing eclectic arrangements of visual art and literature to free the characters from overly narrow attributions; appropriation becomes an emancipatory strategy. Reichek employs a variety of media, incorporating artworks and literary works from all eras. Textile techniques such as embroidery and knitting, alongside conceptual work, photography, and various printing techniques, have been among her preferred artistic means since the 1970s. '_Now If I Had Been Writing This Story_' builds on Reichek's earlier work cycles '_Minoan Girls_' (2012-16) and '_Ariadne’s Thread_' (2008-12). The exhibition title is borrowed from the poem '_Phèdre_' by the English writer Stevie Smith, who, in defiance of Phædre’s tragic fate, uses the power of words to at least express the wish for a happy ending. The formal and conceptual link between the exhibited works, largely hand-embroidered images, is the thread, in both figurative and literal senses: Ariadne’s thread, by which the story unfolds from the labyrinth, and the embroidery thread with which Reichek weaves images and text passages into shimmering visual compositions. The works in the exhibition quote, among others, works by Gustav Klimt, André Masson, and Henri Matisse, juxtaposing them with texts by Stevie Smith, Erika Mumford, Henry de Montherlant, Giorgio de Chirico, and Nonnus, a Byzantine poet from the 5th century. Reichek's repeated reference to myths as archetypal stories connects her aptly with the activity of embroidery, which is built on repetition. 'Just as in sewing one repeatedly loops a thread around a fabric substrate, we repeat and recycle these myths over the centuries. And just as sewing creates an invisible background story on the back of the fabric, these ancient myths—proto-narratives dealing with fundamental inner drives—have always been open to analysis, interpretation, and deconstruction. It is already a very old method to dissolve and reassemble stories and motifs, no matter how modern or contemporary we may consider this phenomenon to be.' (Elaine Reichek, excerpt from the artist's book published for the exhibition). Reichek immediately recognized the structural similarity between pixelated digital images and templates for embroidery or knitting patterns, thus integrating digital media into her artistic practice. Just as a pixel is, the individual stitch is the basic building block of visual transfer in Elaine Reichek's artistic work: A pixelated image is reminiscent of an embroidery diagram, just as the stitches of a handmade embroidery refer back to a JPEG taken from the internet or scanned from a printed source. Although digital technology has accelerated and expanded the possibilities for research, translation, and production, Reichek’s works remain material objects rooted in the history of thread as a medium. The artist's book published for the exhibition is designed as a decorative storage box in the style of the _Hamilton Urns_—one of the earliest American neoclassical wallpaper designs—in which her exhibition unfolds physically and conceptually. The box contains two different forms of books: a conventionally bound volume presents the works of the exhibition of the same name and includes an essay by the artist. Alongside it, in four leporellos, her latest work _Toutes les filles_ (2016/17) is explored by juxtaposing the 24 motifs used with their art-historical sources, thus entering into direct communication. The hand-printed wallpaper with the Hamilton Urns pattern has almost become a trademark of Reichek's exhibitions in recent years and is also found as a wall background in the exhibition. In this special color scheme, it was custom-made for the exhibition.

Tickets for the Secession can be purchased via the provided link. Visitors are directed to an external ticketing platform for booking information.