Martina Stapf uses the self-image as a critical artistic practice to explore identity concepts. In her staged photographs – captured on analogue film – she deals with the body as a medium. The movements in the photographs are imaging and intuitive. Together with different fabrics nestled around the female body, they create a symbiosis of material and substance. The body becomes a projection surface, opening up certain association that want to hide the female body as a potential source of pleasure, but also leaves space for interpretation. The artist addresses the problematic relationship between appearance and identity, as well as the body codes that are firmly anchored in the cultural space in which we are embedded.

Martina Stapf (*1990 in Eisenstadt) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna with Dorit Magreiter and lives and works in Vienna.

[text Sophie Haslinger]

1990

born in Eisenstadt, lives and works in Vienna

2012-2017

Academy of Fine Arts, class of Video & Videoinstallation, Dorit Margreiter; Vienna

2015

International Summer Academy of Fine Arts; Salzburg

2010-2011

Schule Friedl Kubelka, class for artistic photography, Anja Manfredi; Vienna

2009-2010

University of Vienna, art history; Vienna

fotoschule.at, digital photography class; Vienna

2017

grant for fine art; Land Burgenland

artist in residence, Paliano/Italy; Land Burgenland

2014

Merit Scholarship, Academy of Fine Arts; Vienna

2013

Youth Culture Prize; Land Burgenland

impressum