Queer Immortality

Death Must Be a Non-Binary Viennese Person

How do we remember lives that elude our conventions of mourning?

The multimedia art exhibition Queer Immortality at QUEER MUSEUM VIENNA explores queer forms of remembrance and sheds light on different perspectives on life, death, and transience. For many queer identities, death can mean erasure or reinterpretation. Queer people may be removed from their social contexts and separated from their chosen families. Traditional rituals surrounding death and mourning often fail to reflect queer lived realities.

Artistic positions by Peter Kozek together with Vanessa Mazanik and Florian Ronc, LA GEORGETTA, Heti Prack, Siggi Sekira, and Florian Aschka present mourning as a collective experience and memory as sometimes distorted. They envision queer alternatives for funerals and burial sites that may appear disruptive and unfamiliar, but for precisely that reason are able to do justice to queer ways of life. Space, too, can be connected to loss and mourning, as tonx, ola, rara, cay and tomashi demonstrate in their engagement with patriarchal violence and the remembrance of the destroyed St. Marx autonomous space. In Queer Immortality, Julia Fuchs explores the art depot as an in-between space of im/mortality, while Danielle Pamp approaches the (im)mortality underlying rupture and transformation.

Lesbian Vampires from Styria, Drag Queens, and Horror Films

The provocative engagement with death and (im)mortality is an essential part of queer cultural history. In the web series Just Gorgeous – Beauty for Dead People, developed by Berivan Sayici and Luis Javier Murillo and featured in the exhibition, drag queens become undertakers. In a series of performative installations by the collective HEATHERS (Veronika Hösch, Nora Jacobs & Nicole Sabella), supporting characters who are usually the first to be killed off in horror films take centre stage.

In literature and art, vampires have long stood for forbidden desire, hidden subcultures, fluid gender identities, and the rejection of social norms. The prototype of the lesbian vampire can be found in the novella Carmilla, which, incidentally, is set in Styria. In Thomas Hörl’s film F.W.M. Symphonie, her successor Nosferatu attempts to replace Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s stolen head.

The exhibition Queer Immortality is open from 2 October 2026 to 24 January 2027, Thursday through Sunday from 2:00 to 6:00 pm.

Admission is free. The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive programme of educational activities and events.

Curator: barbara stöhr | Artists: Peter Kozek together with Vanessa Mazanik and Florian Ronc, LA GEORGETTA, Heti Prack, Siggi Sekira, Florian Aschka, Danielle Pamp, Julia Fuchs, Berivan Sayici/Just Gorgeous – Verein für Dramatik und Performance Kunst, Thomas Hörl, tonx, cay, rara, ola & tomashi, HEATHERS (Veronika Hösch, Nora Jacobs & Nicole Sabella)

The curator thanks: All artists, Sophie & Pandi, Michal & Larissa for their trust. Aftab Maher for the exhibition consultation. Kerry, Anastasia, Stefanie, Alex, Daria, Tommi and the whole team of QUEER MUSEUM VIENNA for their support – this exhibition wouldn’t have been possible without all of you.