Ju Aichinger: Fragile Power in Clay, Costume and Queer Worlds

Austrian artist Ju Aichinger transforms everyday materials into metaphors for queerness, intimacy, and social presence.

Who Is Ju Aichinger ?

Vienna doesn’t lack talent but few artists move through its scene with the bold sensitivity of Ju Aichinger.

Ceramics that blush. Costumes that shout. Installations that breathe like bodies.

Born in 1995 in Bad Ischl and currently based in the city’s queer and experimental core, Aichinger brings clay, fabric, and performance into charged conversation.

Ju Aichinger seated on their own artwork—artist portrait in a studio/gallery, black turtleneck and cap, mixed shoes, textile/sculptural piece across lap, paint buckets in background; Vienna-based artist working in ceramics, costume, and performance. — **Ju Aichinger** - Vienna-based interdisciplinary artist seated on their own artwork; a portrait of presence and authorship spanning ceramics, costume, and performance. For **Parallel Vienna 2025** *Image courtesy of Ju Aichinger* Credits: Mafalda Rakoš @mafaldarakos Lukas Meixner @lume2022

They work in ceramics, installation, costume, and painting, but it’s not about medium.

It’s about staging identity, bending material, and making space where softness resists and style reveals.

Detail from Ju Aichinger’s installation “to be or not to be (butch)”—mud-smeared boots beside crumpled jeans and blue shirt on a timber floor; queer presence/absence; shown at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Semperdepot — **Ju Aichinger,** **to be or not to be (butch)****, detail.** Mud-streaked boots and a sloughed pair of jeans/shirt stage presence and absence, an invitation to “walk in their shoes.” Presented at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Semperdepot. *Permission and courtesy of the artist*

Their work isn’t just expressive. It’s a mirror, a gesture, a refusal to fit in quietly.

Who is Vienna’s Boldest Interdisciplinary Voice? Ju Aichinger Might Be It.

There’s a theatrical stillness in Ju Aichinger’s work that feels anything but quiet.

Installation view of Ju Aichinger’s “to be or not to be (butch)” at Semperdepot, Vienna—mud-smeared boots, jeans and cast garment forms spread across a wooden gallery floor; photos and works on surrounding walls. — **Vienna.** Clay, costume, and cast garments sprawl across the floor to stage queer identity through presence/absence, mud-smeared boots, sloughed jeans, and body-like shells turning the gallery into a performative landscape. *Permission and courtesy of the artist.*

**Vienna Semperdepot.** In **Ju Aichinger’s** installation *to be or not to be (butch)*, ceramics, textiles, and photographs become echoes of bodies: a field of gestures where everyday clothing hardens into sculpture, merging performance, queer narrative, and contemporary craft. *Permission and courtesy of the artist.*

**Ju Aichinger,** **to be or not to be (butch)****, Semperdepot, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.** A glazed, mask-like wall relief set in a ruffled textile collar with a text ribbon slipping from the mouth pairs with a blue, spiked ceramic form, part boot, part armor, resting on a gritty floor. Together they ask what remains when the body steps out: clay and textile hold presence/absence, queering relic and costume in a performance-driven installation. *Permission and courtesy of the artist*

Ceramic bodies lean, stretch, bend, and bloom; fabric drips from limbs like unsaid thoughts; eyes painted on paper look back at you, not asking, but knowing.

The spaces Aichinger builds are dense with intention, even when they're soft, silly, or strange. One enters not a room, but a world that has already made its mind up: you’re here to witness.

**Ju Aichinger,** **Solid Caps** **(Edition of 13), 2024, glazed ceramic with rhinestones.** Two hand-built cap sculptures, **“FUCK THE BAUHAUS”** and **“EMO”**, turn streetwear slogans into sculptural attitude, fusing craft, satire, and queer performance energy. *Permission and courtesy of the artist.*

Aichinger has emerged as a multi-hyphenate force in Austria’s contemporary art scene.

Her work dissolves distinctions: between figure and object, sculpture and apparel, image and embodiment.

You don’t view Aichinger’s pieces. You find yourself inside them.

Ju Aichinger “Candle Faces” work-in-progress—hand holding an amber, sun-faced cast object against a gray wall; intimate studio snapshot of the series. — **Ju Aichinger,** **Candle Faces** **(WIP).** Hand-held, sun-faced cast in warm amber, part relic, part domestic ritual, extending the artist’s blend of ceramics, costume, and performative objects. *Permission and courtesy of the artist.*

What’s striking is the tension between fragility and command. Aichinger’s ceramic sculptures, often referencing queerness and the coded language of bodies, flirt with collapse.

They sag, smirk, and seduce, embedded with pinks, skin tones, and gleaming glazes. There’s humor here, yes, but it’s not lightness.

Stage view with two rolling scaffold towers wrapped in translucent prints of a face, mouth, and hands; light haze on dark stage; bouquet and props at base—Ju Aichinger stage design and costume for the performance “hold yr ache 2 my ache” by Zeynab Kirikou Gueye & Lau Lukkarila (with Val Holfeld). Photo by Marcella Ruiz Cruz. — **Ju Aichinger, stage design & costume** for *hold yr ache 2 my ache*, a performance by **Zeynab Kirikou Gueye** & **Lau Lukkarila**. Mobile scaffold towers wrapped in printed mesh (enlarged body details) turn the stage into a moving anatomy; created in collaboration with **Val Holfeld**. *Photo: Marcella Ruiz Cruz. Permission and courtesy of the artist.*

Performance “hold yr ache 2 my ache” — two rolling scaffold towers wrapped in translucent prints of face/mouth/hands on a dim, hazy stage; bouquet at base. Stage design & costume by Ju Aichinger with Val Holfeld; photo Marcella Ruiz Cruz. — **Performance:** *hold yr ache 2 my ache* by **Zeynab Kirikou Gueye** & **Lau Lukkarila**. **Stage design/costume: Ju Aichinger** (with **Val Holfeld**), rolling scaffold set pieces printed with faces, mouths, and hands, merging choreography, image, and object. *Photo: Marcella Ruiz Cruz. Permission and courtesy of the artist.*

It’s a queer laugh in a heavy room. Their installations, especially the series surrounding to be or not to be(butch), revel in contradiction: strong silhouettes in vulnerable poses, bold gestures shaped in gentle material.

Pop culture meets queer code, softness becomes defiance. Theatricality isn’t decoration, it’s resistance.

Detail from *kneading to the 3rd millennia*, concept by Lau Lukkarila. Choreography and performance by Charlie Laban Trier, Ju Aichinger, tiran, Manuel Riegler, and Lau Lukkarila. Photo by Jean Marc Turmes. Permission and courtesy of the artist

Costumes designed for choreographers like Lau Lukkarila or Alex Franz Zehetbauer aren’t accessories but sculptural exclamations: identity made wearable, movement as manifesto.

**Ju Aichinger,** **Five of Swords** **(2024)**, glazed ceramic, melted glass & video *(glasierte Keramik, geschmolzenes Glas, Video)*. Studio view with works laid on bubble wrap pairs with a wall installation where a blade houses a tiny screen; craft meets myth and talismanic relic. *Photos: Philipp Pess. Permission and courtesy of the artist.*

Aichinger’s practice makes space for people who have often been told to take up less of it.

In conversation with artists like Jakob Lena Knebel or Ashley Hans Scheirl, with whom they’ve exhibited, Aichinger’s voice resonates with a newer generation of interdisciplinary queer makers in Vienna: bold, performative, and materially precise.

Overhead studio view of Ju Aichinger with bright red hair; large figurative painting leaning against the wall and a neon-green framed relief on the floor; tools, shoes, and materials scattered—Academy of Fine Arts Vienna studio. — **Ju Aichinger, in the studio (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna).** Between ceramics, costume, and painting: a large figurative canvas and a sculptural, neon-green framed relief sit mid-process as Aichinger maps queerness into material form. *Permission and courtesy of the artist.*

But what sets them apart is the emotional intelligence embedded in every glaze, drape, or cut of fabric. There is no irony for irony’s sake, only intimacy turned sculptural.

These aren’t just works about identity. They perform identity. They make it tactile. Touchable. And perhaps most importantly, shareable.

Key Themes

Queer embodiment
Identity as material
Social metaphor via objects
Performance and staging as sculpture
Costume as sculpture

Three small glazed ceramic sculptures resembling handbags/baskets, each hanging by metal chains from a wooden shelf on a white wall—exhibition view by Ju Aichinger at the_dessous. — **Ju Aichinger — exhibition view (@the_dessous).** Chain-hung ceramic “bags”/vessels—glazed stoneware suspended from a simple shelf—stage presence, tenderness, and queer materiality with a light, domestic wink. *Photo by the artist. Permission and courtesy of the artist.*

Notable Series / Visual Motifs / Curatorial Projects

to be or not to be(butch): installation + ceramics + costume hybrid work
Part of Kollektiv Zirkusgasse: curatorial space and communal dialogue via art staging
Solid Caps : glazed ceramic baseball caps that subvert masculine symbols and turn everyday objects into queer-coded relics

Ju Aichinger’s work sits at the intersection of queer performance and sculptural craft.

Ju Aichinger studio WIP—close-up of a hand holding a small folded piece of green-gold glazed ceramic with blue accents; tools and test tiles blurred on the worktable. — **Ju Aichinger — work in progress (studio).** A hand holds a small, folded shard of glazed ceramic—green-gold with pale blue pooling—fresh from the bench; a close-up of how touch, craft, and queerness take material form. *Permission and courtesy of the artist.*

They’re not just contributing to Vienna’s interdisciplinary wave, they’re shaping it.

With a practice rooted in collective energy, bodily intuition, and visual wit, Aichinger belongs to the lineage of artists who refuse to separate identity from form.

Ju Aichinger elevator mirror self-portrait—white oversized T-shirt, one leg raised in a black boot, phone covering face; closing image for Munchies Art Club Artist Spotlight; Vienna-based artist working across ceramics, costume, and performance. — **Ju Aichinger — Artist Spotlight (Munchies Art Club).** Elevator self-portrait as attitude statement: the Vienna-based interdisciplinary artist fuses ceramics, costume, and performance into tender, defiant sculptural worlds. *Permission and courtesy of the artist.*

Follow Ju Aichinger on Instagram and keep an eye on their future exhibitions, performances, and collaborative projects, especially within Vienna’s shifting queer art ecology.

Ju Aichinger is also co-curator of the Kollektive Zirkusgasse.

Breaking News and Upcoming Show:

Ju Aichinger is participating with a Solo-Presentation as Artist Statement at Parallel Vienna

Ju Aichinger among many other Artist on this years Munchies Art club Short list 2025

Ernst Koslitsch is an artist, writer, and co-founder of Munchies Art Club. His work navigates the intersections of speculative fiction, archaeology, and visual systems, while his writing reflects a deep interest in contemporary art’s shifting languages, both digital and material.