My works usually refer to the place where they are created. This can be a personal experience that connects me to the place, an institutional setting through an exhibition situation, or a social encounter. I develop situations that allow the seekers to become playful accomplices of intimacy and publicity. The resulting performances, videos, and installations arise from the tension between dealing with a given situation and connecting (it) with one’s own experiences, desires, and interests. I am particularly interested in the perception of foreign and self-images as well as the relationship between body and voice. Starting from the body politics surrounding us, I understand the body as a place of manifestation through which our constant confrontation with social demands, conventions and constraints is embodied. Thematic foci of my work are the perception of images of others and of the self as well as the relationship between body and voice. The voice, as part of the body, appears as a personal response to social and political processes.

Black emptiness fills the uncertain depth. Rippling steps echo in response. The fast, bumpy breathing gets louder and louder.

The voice is mine. I’m afraid.

______ A dark tunnel. The lowest point on earth. A cramped room.

They are existential and human sensations like fear or desire, which are the driving force and essential part of Julia Wirsching’s artistic exploration.

She draws on her own experiences of the borders of personal sensory perception, which she explores in performative installations. Thus, she creates enigmatic and uncanny situations and moods, in which the viewer can actively or passively participate.

Wirsching’s body is often the subject of her artistic practices in the field of performance, video art and drawing. The starting point is her voice, which she transforms into multimedia and sculptural works. The fleeting acoustic medium is transmitted in visual or auditory means and linked to emotions, which form the bridge between abstract thinking and acting.

In the age of globalization and digitalization, the human voice and language are gaining more and more relevance and power. It is not only an organ of expression, an information carrier, an emotional vehicle and means of interpersonal communication, but at the same time a bodily gesture which can open up access, exchange and participation as well as equally refuse it.

With the means of her own voice, Wirsching examines the relationship between her individual self and the external world that surrounds her with indefinite boundaries. And by returning to the only tangible reference and constant of being human, her body as a resonating space, the artist seeks to make this unknown value comprehensible and to locate it as a human being.

Text by Anna Maria Katz