We 23.9.2026
2.00 pm - 4.00 pm
kex—kunsthalle exnergasse
B
Who Cares? Exploring Institutional Care Practices
As part of the Exhibition On Chewing Shoelaces: Art, Mess and Radical Kinship, Miriam Wistreich will host the Sharing Session Who Cares?
Who Cares? invites staff and representatives of art and cultural institutions as well as artists to explore how care can become part of institutional practice. Together with Miriam Wistreich, Director of UKS, Oslo (Young Artists' Society) the Sharing Session examines how institutions can better support artist-parents and other caregivers through practical tools - specifically through care riders.
What does it mean to embed care within programming, production and organisational culture? And how can care benefit not only artists, but change how institutions themselves operate?
Through discussion and shared reflection, participants will explore questions of responsibility and sustainability, imagining more equitable and resilient ways of working together.
Miriam Wistreich is the director of UKS – (Unge Kunstneres Samfund / Young Artists’ Society), an Oslo-based institution for contemporary art and a Norwegian membership organization. Founded by artists for artists in 1921, UKS has since established itself as one of Norway’s core experimental venues for the arts. Wistreich’s current interests revolve around questions of infrastructure; how to build and sustain art spaces and structures that create more caring and equitable institutions. She holds an MA in Interactive Media from Goldsmiths, UK and is an alumnus of De Appel Curatorial Programme, NL. She was previously Artistic Director at Hotel Maria Kapel, an artist-in-residence and exhibition space in Hoorn, NL.and has previously worked with organisations such as I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want to be Part of Your Revolution and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, NL and SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, DK.
The Sharing Session will be held in English.
Register here
On Chewing Shoelaces: Art, Mess and Radical Kinship
Artists: Liesel Burisch, Club Fortuna, Andrea Gunnlaugsdóttir, Sofia Hörmann, Nana Mandl, Mani Obeya, Asher O'Gorman, Jesseline Preach, Imani Rameses, Rychèl Thérin Scott, Sarah Sternat, 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
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.
