Figure of the Child\u00a0is\u00a0Tolia Astakhishvili\u2019s first solo museum exhibition and her largest presentation to date. Realized in situ, the exhibition profoundly transforms mumok\u2019s spaces and procedures, seeking to bridge the rhythms of everyday life with the temporality of exhibition-making through a careful attunement to the threshold where they meet. In the process, Astakhishvili has been guided by a recurring motif in her work: the titular \u201cfigure of the child.\u201d For the artist, this figure\u00a0encompasses the remarkable intellectual and creative autonomy of children, but also their fundamental dependency and vulnerability. Beginning from this tension,\u00a0the exhibition unfolds into a broader exploration of the possibilities and limits of empathy.<\/p>\n
In the months leading up to the exhibition opening, Astakhishvili will develop the project on site at mumok and share her process with the public via\u00a0Tolia Curriculum, a format that re-envisions the temporality of exhibition-making. Here, the artist intervenes in conventional museum logistics by inviting visitors into production and installation phases that are typically held out of view. In doing so, she shifts the focus to moments of transition and extends the process of transformation beyond its usual temporal limits and structures of visibility.\u00a0Audiences are thus invited to encounter the work while it is still taking shape, marking a first in mumok\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
Amidst an evolving architectural environment,\u00a0Tolia Curriculum\u00a0unfolds as a living daily program of workshops, screenings, readings, and participatory formats for children and adults. These collective activities channel the artist\u2019s ethos of inhabiting space and allowing the traces within to transform it over time. To this end, Tolia Astakhishvili has brought her close collaborators into the process, opening her practice of exchange and distributed authorship to the public. Contributors across practical and discursive formats include:\u00a0Liesl Ujvary, writer of poetry, fiction and radio plays;\u00a0Kristian Vistrup Madsen, writer, critic and curator;\u00a0James Richards\u00a0and\u00a0Simon L\u00e4ssig,\u00a0artists and filmmakers;\u00a0Livia Polanyi,\u00a0linguist and writer;\u00a0Dylan Peirce, artist and musician; and\u00a0Laurids Ortner, architect of mumok and co-founder of Haus Rucker & Co. Further collaborations will take place with Astakhishvili\u2019s past and present students, as well as with Vienna\u2019s Academy of Fine Arts and University of Applied Arts. What connects these contributors is a shared understanding of education as a collective practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a prelude to mumok\u2019s forthcoming 2026 programming under director Fatima Hellberg, which will focus on the relationship between art and life,\u00a0Tolia Curriculum\u00a0transforms the museum into a place where artistic work can be experienced as an ongoing process. The format gradually folds into the exhibition,\u00a0Figure of the Child, where the \u201cfigure of the child\u201d is continuously incarnated anew throughout the installation, publication, and accompanying events.<\/p>\n
This newness involves a radical potential as well as the friction of difference. A newborn enters the world fundamentally out of sync with its surroundings, compelled to observe, adapt, and at times surrender to preexisting structures.\u00a0Figure of the Child\u00a0offers an artistic analog of this process while foregrounding its emotional dynamics: moments of bewilderment and wonder, but also the fundamental need to survive. Through continuous processes of rupture and adaptation,\u00a0Figure of the Child\u00a0and\u00a0Tolia Curriculum ultimately reimagine the museum itself as a vulnerable and shifting organism\u2014one continually negotiating tensions between inheritance, adaptation, and the possibility of change.<\/p>\n
With works by Zurab Astakhishvili, Aurel, \u015etefan Bertalan, Kaucyila Brooke, Veronica Brovall, G\u00fcnter Brus, Elene Chantladze, James Ensor, Nan Goldin, Yaryna Fedoriv, Irma Gubeladze, Ull Hohn, Paul Joostens, Alison Knowles, Louise Lawler, Charlotte Moorman & Nam June Paik, Dylan Peirce, Pablo Picasso, Charlotte Posenenske, James Richards, Irena Rosc, Medardo Rosso, Dieter Roth, Maka Sanadze, Heimo Zobernig, and others<\/p>\n
Curated by Fatima Hellberg and Manuela Ammer\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tolia Astakhishvili (born 1974 in Tbilisi, Georgia) lives and works in Tbilisi and Berlin. In her interdisciplinary practice, Astakhishvili develops immersive installations that encompass elements of sculpture, drawing, painting, sound, and video. Her work approaches architecture as an open material shaped by the bodies, memories, and the stories that inhabit it. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, Venice (2025); SculptureCenter, New York (2024); Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (2023);\u00a0and Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2023). Recent group exhibitions include MoMA PS1, New York (2025); Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris (2025); and Museo de Arte Contempor\u00e1neo de Roma, Rome (2024).<\/p>\n
For more details on the program of\u00a0Tolia Curriculum\u00a0please visit www.mumok.at\/en\/curriculum.<\/a><\/p>\n