Vienna Art Week Goes Virtual: Interview with Cristina Fiorenza

The 2020 Vienna Art Week (VAW) proceeded as scheduled despite Austria's lockdown, shifting to a fully virtual format. Founded in 2007, the annual visual arts festival maintained its daily programming under the theme 'Living Rituals.' The sudden pivot required last-minute technical and organizational adjustments. A key component, the Open Studio Days, transformed into 'video visits.' Artist Cristina Fiorenza (born 1973 in Naples, lives and works in Vienna) participated by creating a single-shot video tour of her studio with the help of set designer Marlies. Fiorenza, who studied architecture at Bauhaus Universität Weimar and later moved to Berlin and the Netherlands, eventually turned to figurative painting. She won the Strabag Art Award and recently studied ceramics at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her work includes 'Pillar Houses,' four-meter-tall wooden installations with curtains, one of which was built in Bavaria's Allgäu region for a project with Vienna's public art program (Kör). Fiorenza cites curiosity, nostalgia, and instinct as her driving forces.