Ahead of Gallery Weekend Berlin, we’re not only introducing you to the artists’ works, but also the stories behind them. We visited Ingrid Wiener (*1942, Vienna) at her home in Styria, Austria—a place that is both her living space and her studio, where her complex tapestries come to life. A selection of these works will be on view from May 1 in the exhibition Gobelins, Films and Dreams at Galerie Barbara Wien, alongside more recent tapestries, a group of her “dream drawings,” as well as videos, records, and books.
In the 1970s, Ingrid Wiener founded the legendary artist-run venues Matala, Exil, and Axbaxtogether with Oswald Wiener and their friend, the Austrian artist Michel Würthle. Beyond her visual art practice, her culinary work forms an equally essential part of her oeuvre: cooking and hosting became, over decades, an artistic practice in its own right. She also worked closely with Dieter Roth, with whom she conceived and wove five large-scale tapestries that are now part of the collections of, among others, Kunsthaus Zürich and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.