This spring, Margo Sarkisova –  a young Ukrainian artist of Assyrian descent, who currently lives and works in Graz, was invited to teach the course Künstlerische Gestaltung at ./studio3 – Institut für Experimentelle Architektur. She was one of several guest lecturers who were not only to introduce students to new techniques, but also to prepare the young architects for a one-day pop-up exhibition on June 5, 2025. 

Margo uses fabric, embroidery, and installation to show how culture and tradition shape the personality. She often works with the body as a symbol and reflect on how identity is formed, broken, and rebuilt while exploring how identity, gender, and culture are deeply connected in the struggle to survive and remain visible.

Throughout this course Margo intended to offer students more than technical skills in this competence. She opened up a space for tactile thinking, encouraging them to engage materials as extensions of their bodily perception. Initially, the idea was to explore the body’s relationship to its environment. How do bodies inhabit space? How is presence negotiated among others? Among us? 

But as the course evolved, so did its focus. Margo shifted the emphasis from “connection” to “presence” – not as a metaphor but as a condition. Presence, she says, is the most concentrated form of spatial interaction – an intuitive, felt state that exists beyond explanation.

The students were asked to translate this concept into sculpture. The outcome is independent and self-explanatory: a series of soft, textile-based works that oscillate between lightness and density, transparency and heaviness. Though silent, they insist on being felt. Their presence is both material and elusive – what Margo calls “eternal weightlessness.”

“While working on this piece I thought about myself. My sculpture is just like me – always different. I can be soft, I can be messy and even sharp”, – says Ole Christian Bürger, one of the students. 

The exhibition space – a greenhouse – quietly, but confidently dictated its rules, furtherly completing the objects: transparent, breathable, suspending objects in their own ecology. Alongside the sculptures, linocuts functioned like contemporary ex librises – intimate self-portraits that tether the anonymous textile forms to their makers without revealing them. This tension between declaration and concealment gives the show its abstract, nearly ritual, very sacred sensation. A choreography of contrast and interconnection.

| Anastasiia Diachenko

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Curator: Margo Sarkisova

Artists: Baumgartner Romy, Bertram Marie, Bürger Ole Christian, Colesnicenco Maria, Dengler Nina Zoe Marie, Eberharter Lukas, Emmerich Elena Marie, Engl Anja, Fedko Yuliia, Forer Leopold, Handle-Hehn Ida, Hechenberger Katharina, Herrmann Lika Sofie, Kaltschmid Philipp, Kranawetvogl Jonathan, Lackner Leona Tereza, Marjanovic Aleksandar, Nitz Thaler Elija, Palfrader Marlene, Peisser Emanuel, Petrashchuk Snizhana, Pfeifenberger Hannah Leonie, Radinger Carmen, Rich Nicolas Alexander, Rinderer Fabienne, Schemmel Daniel, Steurer Lisa, Swain Carl Frank, Thurner Michael, Voit Julian Hubert, Wagner Tim, Winter Laura, Zilse Jan-Ole