Sophia Rohwetter
Sophia Rohwetter is a predoctoral University Assistant at the Department of Art History at the University of Vienna. She studied art history and cultural theory at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Zurich University of the Arts and Bennington College (VT) and completed a Master in Critical Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Her master thesis on the tragic and the comic in the work of Mike Kelley was supervised by Prof. Dr. Sabeth Buchmann and awarded with the Honorary Award for scientific theses. Her academic research focuses on concepts of desire and labor in modern and contemporary art and is located at the intersection of art history, Marxist aesthetics and psychoanalysis. She regularly writes for Texte zur Kunst and has contributed various essays and papers to exhibition catalogues, scientific publications and academic conferences. In 2024, Sophia Rohwetter was awarded the 1st AICA Prize for Young Art Criticism.
Research interests: History and philosophy of modern and contemporary art; Marxist aesthetics; psychoanalysis; feminist art history; philosophy of film; theories of comedy and tragedy
Awards and Scholarships:
- Honorary Award for academic theses, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2024
- AICA Prize for Young Art Criticism, 2024
- Exposé-Stipendium, German Academic Scholarship Foundation, 2023
- Project funding for scientific research projects, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2023
- Project funding for artistic research projects, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2022
- Merit Scholarship, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2022
- Scholarship recipient of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, 2018-2023
Talks and Workshops (selection):
- Wider die puristische Stoffverarbeitung. Mike Kelleys Riddle of the Sphinx als intermediale Szene, talk given at the XII. International Congress of the German Society of Aesthetics (The Media of Art/The Arts of Media), University of Fribourg, September 2024.
- Failing Formalizations. Mike Kelley’s dysfunctional diagrams, talk given at the workshop “The visionary drawing and its knowledge”, University of Strasbourg, June 2024.
- The tragic and the comic in the work of Mike Kelley, talk given at the workshop “Concept and Critique: A collaborative inquiry on the relation between art and philosophy” (organized by Amanda Holmes and Rok Benčin), University of Applied Arts Vienna, June 2024.
- Radical psychiatry and sexual difference in Alberto Grifi’s anthropology of disobedience, talk given at the conference “Violence, Care, Cure. (Self-)Perceptions within the medical encounter” (organized by Clio Nicastro and Marta-Laura Cenedese), Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI), Berlin, February 2022.
Publication (selection):
- Io sono matta: Psychiatric violence, militant madness and sexual difference in Alberto Grifi’s ‘anthropology of disobedience’, in: Violence, Care, Cure, hg. von Clio Nicastro und Marta-Laura Cenedese. London: Routledge, 2025 (forthcoming).
- Formale Wimpernschläge (exhibition review on Rosemarie Castoro at MAK Wien), Texte zur Kunst, no. 132 (December 2023): 221–226
- Von flüchtigen Gaunern und besetzten Räumen, in: Im Sturz durch Raum und Zeit. 40 Jahre Stiftung Binz39. Zürich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2023.
Teaching: