We 16.9.2026
3.00 pm
kex—kunsthalle exnergasse
B
Exhibition Opening: On Chewing Shoelaces
☆ Queer Nursing book reading by Liesel Burisch
Liesel Burisch’s Queer Nursing asks us to rethink who gets to nurse, who gets to parent, and what care can look like. It offers a candid, queer perspective on feeding, bodies, pleasure, shame, care and parenthood, making space for experiences that are often missing from the stories we tell about parenting. The reading will focus on the role of friends serving friends through times of feeding babies.
☆ Community Picnic and Fort Building hosted by HOOD for Artist Parents
☆ PREACH concert by Jesseline Preach
Jesseline Preach brings her deeply physical, genre-bending sound to kex. Influenced by trippy hip-hop, danceable pop and contemporary R’n’B, her music combines sharp, snappy lyrics with a magnetic stage presence.
Preach is a singer, songwriter, producer and interdisciplinary artist from Hamburg, working across music, performance and DIY culture. She is also co-founder of One Mother, a label and collective creating space for the work of People of Colour, femmes and anarchopunks outside the mainstream.
This exhibition is created with parents, caregivers, children, and their wider communities in mind. No childcare is provided at our events, albeit plenty of understanding, paper, and crayons. Our symbols below indicate who each event is designed for.
☆ Bring the crew
This event is intended for all generations.
☆☆ Steal a moment
If you can come on your own, enjoy some uninterrupted time at this event.
If not, bring your little ones. We’re happy to have them too.
On Chewing Shoelaces: Art, Mess and Radical Kinship
Exhibiting Artists: Liesel Burisch, Club Fortuna, Nana Mandl, Jesseline Preach, Rychèl Thérin Scott, Sarah Sternat, HOOD dreamers and Im_flieger
Participating artists & facilitators: Alex Bailey, Andrea Gunnlaugsdóttir, Sophia Hörmann, Krõõt Jurak, Mani Obeya, Asher Ó Gormáin, Imani Rameses, Miriam Wistreich
Curated by HOOD for Artist Parents Vienna
Here, art is made in the margins – between night feeds and school runs, between loss and life. It is made amidst leaking bodies and small sticky hands, in stolen minutes, in the gendered debris of daily life.
In a world that calls parents monstrous for wanting both autonomy and kin, On Chewing Shoelaces is a space – a rupture – where the patriarchal and ableist demands of “professionalism” and “productivity” are side-eyed.
It holds the gap between creation and care, refusing the tidy myth of the solitary artist. The exhibition brings together painting, sculpture, film, performance, collective experimentation, HOOD dreaming, a Queer Nursing book reading, and a FLINTA* play-fight night.
A co-working area is integrated into the exhibition setting, inviting all visitors to: sit, read, work, cry, fight, collaborate, care, radicalise kinship, chew on shoelaces – and perhaps, together, make this mess matter.
Supported by Bezirk Alsergrund, Bildrecht.
All the events as part of the exhibtion are in collaboration with Im_flieger, Backpulver and UKS Oslo
