QMA Artist Collective 2025
COLLECTIVE WORK CURRENTLY IN PROGRESS
Participating artists
Ana Mikadze
Juca Fiis
Yehor Antsyhin
Sattva Giacosa
So Young Park
Jiun-You Ou
Dunia Sahir
Iklim Dogan
Isabelle Edi
Laura Sofia Oyuela Flores
Bassano Bonelli Bassano
Michael Reindel
Aurelia van Kempen
The Curators
This year’s curatorial team is being led by Ale Zapata and includes two external curators: Eva Kovač and Andrea Popelka.
Ale Zapata
Ale Zapata is a Mexican curator, cultural worker, and visual designer based in Vienna. Her work focuses on exploring gender discourse and identity, with a curatorial journey that has been largely self-taught and shaped by over a decade of immersive experience. Ale’s practice emphasizes care-driven methodologies and non-hierarchical structures, striving to foster inclusive and collaborative environments
Eva Kovač
Eva Kovač is an art historian and curator based in Vienna. Since January 2024, together with her colleagues from Blockfrei Collective she has been leading the artistic direction and curatorial program of DAS WEISSE HAUS, an association and independent art institution in Vienna. Her research focuses on performance, the interplay of tradition and technology, art financialization, nationalism, and antinationalism (particularly in Central and Southeast European contexts).
Photo credit: © Uroš Miloradović
Andrea Popelka
Andrea Popelka is a curator, researcher, and body worker based in Vienna and Berlin. She is broadly concerned with the relationship between art and politics, taking a materialist approach. Popelka craves a critical and stimulating exhibition making that adequately corresponds to the present and its implications in history. Currently, she is working closely with the artist directors of Skulpturprojekte Münster on the realisation of its 2027 edition.
Photo credit: © Julia Gaisbacher
The Jury
The artists selected by an external jury comprised of Brooklyn J. Pakathi and Frederike Sperling, together with this year’s curators Ale Zapata, Eva Kovač and Andrea Popelka.
Brooklyn J. Pakathi
Brooklyn J. Pakathi (They/Them) is an independent curator and cultural producer. Their curatorial work is shaped by an interest in decolonial curatorial practices and a search for alternative curatorial strategies that can be used to embed cultural equity. Brooklyn works in actioning cultures of technology, developing inclusive and alternative definitions of the technological and using virtual space to deploy artistic practice and discourse outside of the modern colonial world system.
Pakathi is also a media artist with an ongoing studio practice in Vienna. Much of their most recent work concerns itself with the language and materiality of emotion. Sentimental longing, melancholy, and various other configurations of intimacy affirm their practice. The Vienna-based artist/curator constructs objects, images and virtual spaces to connect and abstract the underlying architecture of these profound and complex psychological forces.
Frederike Sperling
Frederike Sperling is the artistic director at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich in Vienna. In this role, she has worked on new commissions, performative exhibitions, live and discursive events with OMSK Social Club, Deva Schubert, P. Staff, Sophie Utikal, among others. In the past, she was head of programming at das weisse haus and a curator at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21). Before, she was curatorially involved at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and Melly Institute, Rotterdam. In addition to serving on juries and teaching, she regularly contributes to art magazines and artistic publications. She studied art history and curating at the University of Amsterdam and Goldsmiths, University of London
(c) Portraitstudio Wien - Theresa Wey