BID - Biennale Internationale Donna
28.03.2026 - 03.05.2026
11:00 \ SATELLITE PROJECT \ SISTIANA
Porto piccolo Art Gallery + Spazio O2 \ Sistiana (TS)
Die Boheme Liegt am Meer - DISKONTINUITÄT PRAKTIZIEREN, ANDERS DENKEN
Participating artists:
Julia Bugram, Julia Dorninger, Julia Hovorka, Marion Kilianowitsch, Gabriele Kutschera, Dora Mai, Teresa Maria von Matthey, Viktoria Morgenstern, Lea Radatz, Michaela Schwarz-Weismann, Birgit Schweiger, Hannah Stippl, Heike Stuckstedde.
Guest artists:
Noémi Kiss, Billi Thanner, ISA Stein.
On light, desire and the paradox of place
The Satellite Project of the 5th International Women's Biennial (BID) in Trieste adopts the concept of 'satellite' — from the Latin satelles, 'companion' or 'attendant' — as a metaphor for connection, observation and exchange. Historically understood as an 'artificial moon', the satellite orbits around a central body while maintaining an autonomous presence. This duality becomes the fundamental curatorial framework: the idea of orbit and proximity, transmission and reception, independence and relationality.
Transferred to the artistic field, the satellite takes on an almost ambassadorial function. The Austrian contributions act as cultural satellites: rooted in their own context, but capable of entering into dialogue with the international environment of Trieste. They transmit questions, impulses and sensibilities across geographical, social and symbolic boundaries. Just as a satellite bridges distances, so the works presented here build connections between the Austrian art scene and the diverse audiences of the BID.
Austria has been continuously present in previous editions of the Biennale, traditionally at Magazzino 26 in Porto Vecchio. This year marks a significant transition: for the first time, Austria is presenting an independent Satellite Project. This curatorial expansion allows for greater conceptual clarity and depth of research. The participating artists articulate precise and innovative positions that address global and human issues from contemporary female and feminist perspectives. Their works act as transmission nodes, bringing social, ecological and emotional discourses from Austria into Trieste's 'orbital field'. Three Austrian artists are also featured in the international exhibition at Magazzino 26, creating a direct link between the central exhibition of the Biennale and this satellite constellation.
In this context, women's art is not placed in a peripheral position. Instead, it manifests itself as an active presence and critical interlocutor of contemporary society, in constant exchange across the boundaries of medium, data, emotions, imagination and geography.
Bohemia by the sea: a utopian proposition
The title of the 5th BID, Bohemia is by the Sea, expresses more than just a geographical impossibility. It proposes a conceptual and philosophical reflection that spans literature, history and the visual arts. The Biennale connects the coastal Bohemia evoked by Shakespeare in The Winter's Tale with Ingeborg Bachmann's powerful reworking of the paradox in her 1964 text Bohemia Lies by the Sea. Set in the unique atmosphere of Portopiccolo Sistiana, this curatorial approach invites us to rethink the improbable, the poetic and the possible.
In Bachmann's reinterpretation, the paradox of Bohemia by the sea is transformed into a utopian place — an imagined space for those who have lost their bearings. It is not a place that can be found on maps: it must be created through language, imagination and trust. It is a space where descent does not imply annihilation, but arrival: a point of rootedness from which renewal can arise. This renewal is based on solidarity, empathy and shared vulnerability, characteristic of those who live on the margins of dominant narratives.
The Satellite Project extends this idea by evoking the spirit of historic Bohemia, of artists, thinkers and outsiders who prioritised creative freedom over material constraints. Nostalgia and desire — often dismissed as forms of escapism — become productive forces here, tools for rethinking reality and imagining alternative futures. For the Austrian artists, this tension manifests itself through light, in a careful dialogue with nature and memory, and in practices that conceive of hope as a generative energy capable of positively orienting consciousness towards the future.
Light as matter, energy and principle
At the heart of the exhibition is a reflection on the nature of light. Light remains one of the most enigmatic phenomena for humanity. It is the foundation of life: sunlight (lux) provides the energy from which living organisms draw vitality. From a physical point of view, light has a dual nature — wave and particle — travelling as energy at extraordinary speeds, yet remaining invisible until it encounters resistance. Only through reflection and refraction does it unfold in colour, emerging when it encounters the world.
This interplay between visibility and resistance extends beyond physics to biology. Contemporary research on biophotons shows that light is present in our cells: living organisms absorb information from natural light and emit light in turn. In this sense, human beings are beings of light — resonant, radiant, intimately connected to the cosmos. We are born from light, we interact with it and we return to it.