Sarah Held

Sarah Held lives and works in Vienna as a cultural scientist and artist.

„On the materiality of feminist resistance, she has researched in the USA, Mexico, Chile and Australia with a focus on “textile agency against sexualised violence/femicides„ (2021) and completed her doctorate with a scholarship from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation at Frankfurt University and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She currently researches on “transformations of the far right in fashion, feminism and pop culture„ (2021, ed. with Elke Gaugele) and “masculinity, fatal body ideals, homophobic homoeroticism and National Socialist aesthetics revisited„ (2022). Since 2023, she has been co-directing the international FWF research project “Fashion and the Far-Right„ at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

She has researched, curated and worked performatively (2016–2023) on the design of a queer-feminist „pornotopia revised“ (exhibition 2022; ed. with Sylvia Sadzinski 2024), most recently at the Filmfest Dresden. With the collective „Aufstand der Schwestern“ (Uprising of the Sisters), she has been creating action art against femicides since 2021. Her preferred arena for feminist artistic intervention is public space, but she has also intervened within the framework of documenta fifteen.

Significant for my teaching is …
… for me, teaching means creating spaces for critical thinking and discussion together, where the boundaries between practice and theory blur. I am particularly interested in exploring interfaces and intersections in order to work out their sociopolitical synergy effects. In doing so, I also view the seminar as a ludic experimental laboratory – utopian thinking is warmly encouraged.