Barbara Kapusta multimedia work encompasses photography, video, installation, sound and sculpture. However, the starting point of her work is always language and her engagement with it. The artist deals with contemporary issues such as the use of resources, toxic landscapes, energy and technology.

What got you into art?
Actually, I always wanted to write. At the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, writing was then also possible as artistic work at the same time as film work with Constanze Ruhm. In Mexico City, I added sculpture studies under Sofia Taboas.

From your point of view, is language what holds art together?
In my practice probably yes: because writing is holding every doing together.

When you’re on a new project, do you start it off with writing?
Writing and finding material often goes together. There are considerations about forms, loose text, and then I build models, and everything comes together.

Is language like a material to you then?
Yes. When I write, I am asking myself about shape - what is it going to be? Is it going to end up as sound? Or as sculpture?

So one could say that the kernel of your practice is how you translate language into a certain shape and form?
Yes, you could say that.

Following up on that: you even have designed your own, esthetically extremely appealing, alphabet. You call it the Flame-Alphabet. How did that come about?
It came from the thought: How does language get onto paper, how does language manifest itself? What can call itself a text? If you are not familiar with the alphabet, you cannot read what is written.

Where is this alphabet being used?
There is a work in a public space related to it, planned to be opening in spring 2025. With the symbols of my Flame-Alphabet, it spells “This is the space we inhabit as neighbours” on the outer wall of a house near the Aspangbahnhof’s memorial. This was a competition initiated by KÖR that I have won. At the mumok, there will be another of my wall works using this alphabet within the exhibition The world of tomorrow will have been another present, which opens in May 2025.

It is obvious in your work that words are important to you. Sometimes, words even stand for themselves – literally, like in your stand-alone speech bubbles!
I create many text works that are stand-alone. Those you mention look like speech bubbles. But I also do sculptures that function without text; however, these objects always come about through research that has ended up as language.

How come that you write in English?
I only write in English by now because I have an international audience. Somehow, I feel that German is too constrained for my art, as my environment is an international one.

Are you a voracious reader?
Sure. When I produce work, I will often join a reading list mentioning the books that have been important for its genesis. For instance, literature about queer-feminist theories, poems… For my work The Leaking Bodies, authors like Octavia Butler, Etel Adnan and Ursula K. LeGuins Science-Fiction were crucial: a kind of writing that floats between literature and art.

Talking about writing: how do you come up with the texts in your speech bubbles?
The speech bubbles present parts of a text I wrote for the project The Giant. It is about a huge body that transforms itself. I have mounted small parts from the longer text onto these speech bubbles, they function like slogans. I also like combining them: accompanying the installation Giant, there were speech bubbles in different sizes around the room and on the walls, plus some ceramic body parts like hands or eyes.

Your work consists of many different elements. Do you feel that the world is so complex that you can only express it through several media?
Good question… yes. The world is complex, but I also appreciate different kinds of media and don’t want to prefer one over the other. The sum of the parts makes for something great. If somebody buys a part of an installation, they will find my whole universe and the bigger part of the work in that same piece. No matter if it’s sound, video or sculpture: I love it when the different elements are being shown together. But people will read different things into them, and that is absolutely fine.

One installation that had many components was Futures, shown at the Kunsthalle Bratislava in 2022…
Right. On the outer wall of the building, there was writing in my Flame-Alphabet, inside there was a sound installation and three huge figures made out of aluminium. I also had created a 4-channel-video in which you can see these figures moving. They walk through a dilapidated house, they communicate, and they generate energy. This whole work is a reflection on energy: how we think about abundance, resources and its existence. 

Because you are environmentally conscious?
Yes, these are issues that bug me. Art is my way of communicating the issues of today, to highlight a political and economic state.

What do you think – can art influence the future?
I’m not that much of an utopist, I’m afraid (laughs). But art has potential. I am not an activist, either, but of course art can be that way. I see that when I look at artists with an activist research-based practice in the fields of ecology and politics. It’s not the way I do things, but they are on my mind.

Another issue that you are looking at are toxic landscapes…
I always write about things that move me, and for my project The Leaking Bodies, I put down my thoughts about leakiness. Our bodies are leaking bodies, or life would not be possible. But leakiness related to a pipeline means disaster, contamination. At the same time, there is the question about the leakiness of boundaries – all these were considerations that I wanted to write about.

You encounter these questions in your everyday life?
Yes, they just surround us!

And then you go on to build the expression of your thinking?
Yes. And then I happen upon locations where issues that I have thought about before come into focus again. For instance, that is what happened at the Kunstverein Braunschweig, in the exhibition project Words don’t go there. The work was about big data collections that are based on racist patterns. I wrote a text that compares the early 20th century with the early 21st century. The issues then were the rise of eugenics, of racist theories… Though it’s not the same, we can see the Right gaining power, we can see a rising fascism that is threatening.

Why did these issues come up in Braunschweig?
Well, it is the location of the German language archive. It shows how even science can be used by an ideology – the Nazi one in that instance. One always thinks of language science as an unpolitical science. But I have dived into this archive, and suddenly found a lot about inheritance theory. Everywhere you go, stories open up that are important to tell.

A sound installation was also part of the work there, right?
Yes, the sound moved around the visitors, they could listen to a 14-minute text read by me. The sculpture looked a bit like an octopus emerging from the ground. The 4-channel sound is booming, sometimes gloomy, sometimes full of promise. It’s all about issues that I care about, and that I want other people to care about too!

In one of your texts, Futures, you write: “In this place fascism spreads from fascism”…
This is my way of engaging people to think! I work a lot with sound artists. I will tell them how I want something to sound, and then we sit down in the studio und listen and cut, I record it, and then we find the right rhythm. I like writing, and I like reading, too.

Consequently, the work exhibited in Braunschweig was about language again?
The show was called Words don’t Go There, to point out the boundaries of language. What language doesn’t have to do, how riddled something can be, how much we need to explain, how many mistakes we can accept. I always found these considerations important when teaching too - I taught visual literature and language arts at the Academy for a long time. Mistakes also have potential; that's what the exhibition was about.

Is your work about the mistakes people make?
Well, we keep hearing that we shouldn’t make mistakes. For instance, regarding the discussion about what is the “right” German. This brings me to the question: Which body is “right”, which body is allowed to be where? The art of the mistake just means to me that I do not have to adhere to the rules made by an institution, society or a machine. And this is exactly where my fascination for mistakes lies!

This must mean that you like mistakes in language?
Language is nothing fixed. But there is always this fear about the change of language, about confusion; people want to keep the language “clean”. For instance, it is seen as an active mistake to gender in German, because those rules are not included in the German language canon. Since 2023, official documents in Lower Austria, where I come from, are no longer allowed to be gendered. Language is not an "ideological playground", says Udo Landbauer, an FPÖ politician who has been deputy head of the state government in Lower Austria since 2023. But language is always a playground.

This means language has the power for change and provocation?
Language will always change, but this change happens slowly by just using it, then later turns into rules. Migration changes language, too. And there is this fear, because there are people who believe you just need to introduce some language rules to stop everything, like queerness. I find it absurd. 

Can language or technology play a role towards a more inclusive society?
Yes, if they are being used with this goal in mind! At the moment, technology is being used for too many senseless things and consumes a lot of water. In my work, I am concerning myself with resources, and who uses them. It’s important to realise that while LA is burning, there is not enough water because it doesn’t rain anymore, but at the same time the AI still needs to be cooled. I keep coming back to the topic of dealing with the environment, with communities, with bodies. It's about a form of responsibility, especially towards our children.

How careful are you with resources in your own work? 
Fair question – hello, aluminium cast! With aluminium, there are primary and secondary alloys. It always takes a lot of energy to produce and process it. Many processing steps involve material that is toxic... In any case, I try to keep toxic materials to a minimum.

What do you want to convey with your work?
I like it when the audience is fascinated - or just has fun. It’s always about certain stories, certain shapes. Very often, you can see some research behind, but I like it when people just approach my work, understanding it as shapes or figures. Personally, I enjoy standing in front of a work and finding that a universe opens itself up to me.

So you don’t think that people need an explanation when looking at your work?
No, I always notice from people's reactions that they can connect when interacting with wall works or sculptures in public spaces, for example. Also, where videos are concerned, I find that people find their own way into them.

What are your new projects?
The exhibition at the mumok from May 2025, where my Flame-Alphabet will be on display. My works will be combined with some from the mumok collection, for example by Fritz Wotruba, Alicia Penalba or George Grosz. Then I'll work on my texts from the last six years, which deal with the question of bodies, their injuries, their integrity, and write a new, longer text. I can imagine a sound piece or a book to go with it. Currently, I'm working on new sculptures here in the studio, which look a bit like spinal columns and will once again be partly made of ceramic.

How do you like working in Vienna?
A lot! I have a great studio, and support. But I know that it has become more difficult. With a government including the right-wing parties it will be hard for small media outlets in respect to funding. Small magazines, spaces that are critical - these I am concerned about.

Interview: Alexandra Markl
Photos: Maximilian Pramatarov