Lisl Ponger

Lisl Ponger explores in her artistic work the construction of identity, ideas about images of the “Other,” and the associated questions of visual representation. In a recent project she built a fictional Ethnographical-Museum in the Viennese Secession’s main hall in which she showed the exhibition “The Vanishing Middle Class”. There she treated the Western middle class and its relation to democracy and neoliberal politics as an object of study. She installed the exhibits according to ethnological museum practices. The installation as well as her photographs question issues of political and social relevance, reflecting also the mechanism of a critical engagement as an artistic practice. Her photographs, e.g. “Summer in Italy”, series 2001“, shown at Documenta11, investigate the circumstances of territorial occupation after the G8 summit in August 2001 and characterize paradigmatically the political stance of her artistic practice.

Lisl Ponger transforms political issues into iconic images. For the “welt museum” in Vienna with she made a “Indian(er) Jones series”. The sujet “the glass bead game” 2010/2015, e.g., opens the curtain playing “the glass bead game” in a revised version. The historical beginnings of the omnipresent museum structures change the status of cultural objects. They are clearly labelled: ” trophy—curio—specimen—artefact—art”. Jones shows us his treasure trove, culturally functional objects that are now only for looking at. Those same objects received (belated) recognition as one of the main catalysts for much of modern painting. Alluding to
these facts, “The Booty”, 2006/2015 presents in a Freudian Surrounding artefacts and museums shop items.
Lisl Ponger was born in 1947 in Nuremberg, lives and works in Vienna, Austria. Her photographs and films were on show at Documenta11 and documenta 12 and in various international Museums and art institutions.