Crit Cross: Feminism in Art Criticism Event

Crit Cross #20. A Forum on Art Criticism
“Feminism in Art Criticism”
Gäste: Nina Schedlmayer, Rosaly D’Mello

The art world has long been dominated by male perspectives and has often neglected or marginalised women. For many years there was no space for more than one woman to emerge per art movement. This is why Verein K has decided to invite two very different but equally influential voices of feminist art criticism for the twentieth edition of Crit Cross. A Forum on Art Crticism: Nina Schedlmayer and Rosalyn D’Mello.

With her art blog Artemisia, Nina Schedlmayer created something that did not exist before in the German-language publishing world: a place for outspoken feminist writing about art. Detached, humorous, straightforward, she reviews exhibitions by feminist artists, counts the number of women in exhibitions or goes after the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna for its Baselitz show.

Rosalyn D‘Mello has been one of the most important feminist voices in Indian literature since her autobiographical novel A Handbook for My Lover (2016). Managing to combine criticism, empathy, food and poetry, her writing on art is always personal. Now based in Tramin, South Tyrol, she also regularly writes about art and cooking in Austria.

In their texts, Schedlmayer and D‘Mello spare the art world even less than the art itself. While D‘Mello often focuses on personal interactions, Schedlmayer also observes the art market and its small and large arrangements, at times performing investigative journalism and institutional critique.
Because we at Verein K have been observing, admiring and discussing the work of both for many years, we have now invited them to join us.

Crit Cross #20 will take place in English both online and at Depot and be facilitated by Klaus Speidel, an art critic, theorist and curator.

Nina Schedlmayer studied art history in Vienna and did her doctorate on art literature under National Socialism. For a long time she was responsible for visual arts in the culture department of the news magazine profil.
She has been editor-in-chief of the cultural magazine morgen since 2019. She continues to publish for media in Austria and Germany such as art magazines Weltkunst, Parnass, as well as for Die Zeit. She runs the blog artemisia.blog, where she writes about art and feminism, and has published numerous catalogue and book contributions. Since 2022 she has been editor of the online magazine ask - art & science krems. In 2017 she received the first Austrian State Prize for Art Criticism.

Rosalyn D’Mello (she/her/they) is a feminist writer, art critic, columnist, essayist, editor and researcher. She is the author of A Handbook for My Lover. She writes a weekly feminist column for mid-day, and a monthly memoir-based art column on contemporary art for STIR. She was a fellow at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen (2021-22), an Ocean Fellowship Mentor (2021), and the recipient of an India Foundation for the Arts research grant (2019-2022). Her writing has been internationally published and anthologised. She is represented by David Godwin Associates.

Crit Cross. A Forum on Art Criticism is an open discussion group of current critical writing, organized three times per year by Verein K in Vienna with the aim to create a platform for sustainable art- and sociocritical dialogues in Vienna.