Sophie Utikal’s textile piece explores the sensations of belonging and displacement in the encounter with an unknown future. The interruption of everyday life emerges in her work as an atmosphere of constant and conflict-ridden negotiation with passivity. The arrangement of the characters evokes the forced physical distancing and the disruption of the tactile currently being imposed on interpersonal relations, addressing the effects that the pandemic has had on our emotions, feelings, and behaviors.
- Miguel A. Lopez

"I made this for the exhibition And if I devoted my life to one of its feathers curated by Miguel Lopez for Kunsthalle Wien. Miguel asked me to produce a work on how the pandemic has affected racialized bodies in the intersections of the body, ecology, economy and collective care. You can view the work in the public spaces of Vienna as it was printed as billboards. 

The image is about leaving a place where I have lived for a long time, not knowing what the new will be. It is about confronting these changes on my own. Even if there are temporary remedies of connecting with others, I feel that the challenge of enduring the current social transition is an individual one. The image tells about the difficulties of staying passive in these moments of disruption, because in the case of Corona there really is nothing I can do. "