MARLENE
HEIDINGER
Marlene Heidinger (*1996, Vienna) is a painter, curator, and filmmaker based in Vienna, Austria. She pursued studies in painting and experimental animation at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and the École de Communication Visuelle in Paris. In June 2024, she earned her master’s degree in Curatorial Studies (“/ecm”) from the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her master’s thesis, “When Artists Curate: From the Studio to the Exhibition Space,” explored curatorial strategies employed by artists, focusing on the use of the studio as an exhibition space. This work reflects her broader interest in curating as an extension of artistic practice.
Marlene Heidinger works with both still and moving images, which enables her to discover new approaches to multidimensional storytelling. She combines her theoretical and practical exploration of textile art and craft, particularly embroidery as a feminist practice, with a critical reflection on social and political structures. Influenced by her curatorial background, she examines the art market and the mechanisms of art production as a mirror of a political society in which objects are often attributed greater value than subjects.
In addition to her work as a visual artist, she is a founding member of the curatorial collective SICC, that has a strong focus on presenting sequential art. Download a CV for a list of exhibitions, publications & prizes.
ARTIST STATEMENT
In my paintings, texts, installations, and textile-sculptural elements, I address everyday issues that affect social interaction and consider art to be an important medium of communication. They always incorporate art production itself and emphasize a humorous approach to self-reflection and social criticism. Increasingly, the focus is placed on the process of art production as work on a par with the importance of the finished artwork, thus questioning existing social, patriarchal phenomena such as productivity and competence. Inspired by an audience that follows certain “rules of conduct” when encountering a work of art, my work explores encounters and the social boundaries that are drawn within them.
These boundaries appear both in the scenes depicted and symbolically in the form of threads and strings that wind through the textile elements, showing how a line can both separate and connect. I am interested in how the rules of social interaction (both between people and between people and works of art) were historically defined by men in patriarchy and how they are being renegotiated today. Care or harshness in interpersonal relationships do not remain private, but are reflected in collective and political dynamics, even leading to conflicts.
My works address processes of identity formation, relationships, and community, and question the transition from the individual to the collective. In my works, men in shirts, ties and suits oftentimes take center stage. They move through my pictorial spaces, entangling and leaning on each other. In a way, they are clumsily navigating in a world full of conflicts that they themselves have created. My practice negotiates questions of care and power, while always keeping an eye on culture and art production as a field of action and a mirror of a broken society.
FEATURED ON
November 2025 | Interview mit Marlene Heidinger, Auðunn Kvaran, Nikoletta Georgakopoulou von Daniel Lichterwaldt
November 2022 | Interview mit Marlene Heidinger, von Daniel Lichterwaldt