Who is still an Austrian?

With works by
Nicolò Degiorgis, Francois-Xavier Gbrè, Runo Lagomarsino, Sonia Leimer, Renato Leotta.

Curated by
Luigi Fassi

Merano Arte will host an exhibition titled Who is still an Austrian? from April 29 to July 9, 2017. 

On the occasion of commemoration of the 700th anniversary of giving the  Municipal Regulations to Merano, the show, curated by Luigi Fassi, introduces the operas of five artists - Nicolò Degiorgis, François-Xavier Gbré, Runo Lagomarsino, Sonia Leimer, Renato Leotta - who question themselves on the social and historical mutations that have interested the South Tyrolean town.

The title of the exhibition draws back to an article - Bin ich ein Österreicher? - on the war newspaper Tiroler Soldaten Zeitung on August 1916. The author is the writer Robert Musil, at the time second lieutenant of the Austrian army and responsible of the Newspaper. 

 “Am I an Austrian if I have a right to citizenship in Vienna, Graz, Trieste or Trento?” “Futile question” they will reply, “you are undoubtedly an Austrian!” Yet the question is not unjustified at all, since, strangely, the concept of “Austria” has not been expressively fixed by law. Thus, the citizens of that State that should legally be defined as “Austria” do not recognize themselves as “Austrians.” Try to ask a citizen in Galicia, a shoemaker in Carniola, or a lawyer in Bohemia, a school teacher in Vienna, a priest in north Tyrol, and a judge in south Tyrol what they are. You will definitely receive as an answer: a Polish, a Slovak, a Carniolan, a Bohemian-German or a Czech, a southern-Austrian or anyhow an Austrian-German, a Tyrolean, an Italian. Nobody will ever answer your simple question with equal simplicity: “I am an Austrian!” (Sono austriaco? In La guerra parallela, Trento, Reverdito, 1987, p. 23).

The show develops right from Musil’s thoughts - a little over one century from their publication - in order to propose them again today, by entwining stories, questions, and interpretations tied to the social and historical mutations that have interested the town of Merano.

The exhibition has been assembled around the new artworks especially made for this appointment by five Italian and international artists who have been in residency in Merano, guests of Merano Arte. They started a thorough research and a series of projects ideated by exploring the town, its history, architecture, landscape, and social environment.

Multiple perspectives of analysis add one to the other and overlap by giving life to new interpretation paradigms of our times. The project is therefore not just an exhibition on Merano, but a narration that tells the epoch-making changes within European society and the global world, by starting right from the recent history of the town. 

The history of Merano can be summarized into a constant search for autonomy. Be in the one pursued by the South Tyrolean territories under the Austro-Hungarian empire and during the Austro-Napoleonic struggle, be in the political confrontation to keep and broaden cultural and administrative freedom after the two World Wars. 

The contribution to the history of Merano is the one of a natural cosmopolitism, built on autonomy, multilingualism, the geographic dialogue between north and south, an interaction between the Mediterranean and the Middle European cultures. That is why the history of Merano is permeable with porous borders, determined as it is by its role of Kurstadt (health resort) along the centuries. In an historical moment in which the crisis of the concept of nation-state cannot find a solution in a shared development towards the idea of a democratic supranational union, Wer ist noch Österreichisch? wants to explore Merano’s multicultural history and heritage as a model for deeper thought on our contemporary times.