Under Other Suns brings together works by Christian Kosmas Mayer and Pablo Martínez-Zárate that explore plants as living carriers of memory and history. In the exhibition, plants appear not as mere symbols, but as sensitive life forms in which biological processes intertwine with political and colonial entanglements. Various forms of history and knowledge intersect within them. At the same time, they are embedded in processes of projection, displacement, and survival, without ever being exhausted by them. It is precisely in their vitality and their own temporality that they resist any singular reading. Here, plants emerge as fragile yet enduring forms of life, carrying traces of violence, continuity, resistance, and care.
- Venue
- kura-t kunstraum traklhaus
- Date
- 23. 7. – 12. 9. 26
Christian Kosmas Mayer
Christian Kosmas Mayer’s cross-media and installation-based works and projects are the result of extensive artistic research and close collaboration with experts from various disciplines. His works aim at a critical re-evaluation of history and the present by placing evolutionary and natural phenomena within a cultural-historical and scientific framework. A central focus of his work is the exploration of questions surrounding archiving and conservation as acts of historical awareness.
Website
Exhibitions
Selected solo exhibitions:
2025 Wearing the Walls (with Sonia Leimer), Ursula Blickle Stiftung, Wien.
2023 and yet you grow, MAK Center, Los Angeles, CA (US).
2022 The Life Story of Cornelius Johnson's Olympic Oak and Other Matters of Survival, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York, NY (US).
En deux mille cent quatre-vingt-un, le monde entier verra sa fin, Galerie Mezzanin, Geneva (CH).
2019 Aeviternity, mumok – Museum für Moderne Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna.
Unverhofftes Wiedersehen, Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin.
2013 Musis et Mulis, Belvedere, Vienna.
Selected group exhibitions:
2025 The World Without Us, Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz (AT).
2024 Heaven can wait, Innsbruck International Biennial of the Arts, Innsbruck (AT).
2023 SHIFT – AI and a future community, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (DE).
On Genes and Human Beings, Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden (DE).
2022 Welcome to Planet B, Ars Electronica Festival, Linz.
2019 Daguerre's Soup, Kunstforum, Vienna.
2017 Publishing as an Artistic Toolbox: 1989–2017, Kunsthalle, Vienna.
2016 Mit anderen Augen – Das Portrait in der zeitgenössischen Fotografie, Kunstmuseum Bonn (DE).
2015 Flirting with Strangers, 21er Haus, Belvedere, Vienna.
2008 Manifesta 7, Rovereto (IT).
2004 26th São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo (BR).
Prizes:
2022 Falling Walls Breakthroughs in Art and Science, Berlin.
2020 Outstanding Artist Award, Ministry for Culture of the Republic of Austria.
2011 Kardinal-König-Kunstpreis, Salzburg (AT).
Publications
Voice without Breath, Schaufler Lab@TU Dresden, Sandstein Verlag, Dresden, 2024.
First Monograph, Phileas, DISTANZ Verlag, Berlin, 2023.
The Book of Record of the Palm Capsule, Mark Pezinger Books, Vienna, 2020.
Aeviternity, mumok, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, 2019.
Pablo Martínez-Zárate
Pablo Martínez-Zárate is an artist-researcher working at the intersection of cinema, performance, and installation. His transmedia work—rooted in memory, archive, and experimental pedagogy—has been exhibited, screened, and published internationally, weaving critical poetics across languages, geographies, and formats.
Website
Exhibitions
2025 Impressions on Colonialism. Notes on an Unfinished History, expanded cinema, premiere in English: Sunset Kino, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (AT); premiere in Spanish: Mexico City International Documentary Film Festival.
Límbica, collaboration with choreographer Aura Arreola. Museo Jumex, Mexico City.
2024 Transposiciones, collaboration with artist Julieta Gil, Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts, Mexico City.
Oblique Takes. Meditations on Art and Crisis, International Documentary Film Festival, DocsMX, Mexico City.
Esta imagen no desaparecerá [This image will not go away], live cinema performance, Centro Cultural de España en México, Mexico City.
Transposiciones, collaboration with Julieta Gil, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City.
Fugas Mediales [Media fugues], Centro de Cultura Digital, Mexico City.
2023 Studio Variations The Netherlands Film Academy, Amsterdam.
Publications
Eccentric Pedagogy. Artistic Research in Times of Crisis, Amsterdam University of the Arts, The Netherlands Film Academy, The Netherlands, 2023. https://pablomz.info/eccentric-pedagogy
“Radical Interventions. Archaeology, Forensics and Montage,” The Palgrave Handbook of Media Misinformation, Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.
Art as a Beacon of Hope: How Creative Expression Can Transform our World, Audrey Plimpton, Salzburg Global Seminar, Salzburg (AT), 2023. https://www.salzburgglobal.org/news/topics/article/art-as-a-beacon-of-hope-how-creative-expression-can-transform-our-world
