Guest artist

The artist was born in 1995 in Brixen, lives and works in Vahrn. She trained at the Cademia art school in St. Ulrich (2014) and completed her diploma in Fine Arts – Painting at the Libera Accademia di Belle Arti (LABA) in Florence in 2019.
In her work, the canvas becomes a screen. Pieces such as The Screen (2019, print and acrylic on canvas) and more recent works on glass and canvas trace how digital surfaces slip between us and the world – sometimes as filter, sometimes as distortion, sometimes as distance from what is actually there. Baumgartner asks what becomes of us in an age intent on controlling everything, and how we might find a way back to something more elemental.

Being human means far more than merely inhabiting a physical body. It describes a complex unity of body, mind and soul – a dynamic interplay that enables us to feel, to think, to reflect and to express ourselves. The human being is a creature that does not merely exist, but is also aware of its own existence.
Two central needs shape human existence: the need for connection and the striving for autonomy. On the one hand, we seek closeness, exchange and belonging – whether through interpersonal relationships, language or shared experiences. On the other, there is an equally strong desire for individual development, for self-determination and personal expression.
Being human thus reveals itself in the tension between these poles: between adaptation and differentiation, between the collective and the individual. It is the capacity to experience emotions, to form thoughts and to carry them outward through language, art or action. It is precisely in creative expression that we see how people process their inner world and enter into dialogue with their surroundings.
In my work, I examine first and foremost the contemporary human being and our collective and individual development, shaped in part by a medium that has become an everyday companion. A device that has taken a fixed and central place in our lives helps to blur ever further the boundaries between how we perceive ourselves and how we are perceived by others. People present themselves as if in a glass display case, and are thereby exposed each day to global competition.
A platform that allows one or even several "rebirths" in virtual space forms the basis of a parallel world. The visible and the invisible document the transformation of the body, which tends to dissolve into countless fragments.
The work Mirror Selfie understands itself as a surface of reflection for these developments. It questions not only our handling of digital media, but also the resulting shifts in our self-understanding as human beings – between authenticity and staging, between reality and projection.