PhD Student selected for 'Art In Digital Contexts and Public Spaces' festival and residency

Zara Worth will be showing new work created during a residency at the Atelierhaus Salzamt in Linz, Austria at the forthcoming LINZ FMR festival. LINZ FMR – Art in Digital Contexts and Public Spaces is a biennial festival and format for artistic processes and positions, that reflects the ephemeral nature of our digital and connected present. LINZ FMR 21 is curated and organized by the independent artist collective qujOchÖ, the net culture initiative servus.at, the Atelierhaus Salzamt, the University of Art and Design Linz and the Sturm und Drang Galerie.

For the festival, Zara will be presenting ‘#Portal’, a sculptural frame-like structure draped with gilded polythene paintings which combine forms and motifs derived from smartphones, selfie-filters and religious icons. ‘#Portal’ is the latest piece of work to come out of Zara’s ongoing practice-led research into the visual and symbolic connections between Russian Orthodox icons, smartphones and selfie-filters. By making manifest the compositional similarities between these different references other metaphoric parallels might be drawn, helping us understand how we relate to handheld technologies and social media cultures today.

FMR 21 will take place from 1-6 June 2021. After exploring the Linz Danube river bank area in the first edition in 2019, the new edition will transform the area around the Mühlkreisbahnhof secondary railway station in Linz Urfahr into a publicly accessible exhibition space, complemented by a multi-day symposium, artist talks, guided tours and concerts. Other participating artists include: Thomas Albdorf (AT), Filipe Vilas-Boas (PT/FR), Clara Boesl (AT), Unnur Andrea Einarsdóttir & Boris Kourtoukov (RU), Tom Galle (BE), Kyriaki Goni (GR), Edurne Herrán (ES), Yarli Allison Lam (CA), Lucas LaRochelle (CA), Aimilia Liontou (GR), Jaakko Myyri (FI), Elisa Giardina Papa (IT), Carlos Sáez (ES), Matthias Pitscher Schäfer (DE), and Simon Weckert (DE).