The international group exhibition Why We Should All Be Feminists, curated by Sabine Fellner & Alex Radu, brings together works by over fifty artists: Elisa Andessner, Iris Andraschek, Simona Andrioletti, Suzanne Anker, Stella Bach, Liliana Basarab, Renate Bertlmann, Irina Botea Bucan, Geta Brătescu, Julia Bugram, Codruța Cernea, Sevda Chkoutova, Katharina Cibulka, Alexandra Croitoru, Simona Deaconescu, Andreea Grigoraș, Lăcră Grozăvescu, Markus Hanakam & Roswitha Schuller, Florentina Holzinger, Edgar Honetschläger, Nona Inescu, Aurora Kiraly, Claudia Larcher, Maria Legat, Lea Liebl, Monica C. LoCascio, Carola Mair, Marta Mattioli, Mihai Mihalcea, Mihaela Moldovan, Anca Munteanu Rimnic, Monika Pichler, Margot Pilz Beamer, Charmaine Poh, Bogdan Rața, Ness Rubey, Elisabeth von Samsonow, Oana Stanciu, Starsky, Lisa Strasser, Mircea Suciu, Tăietzel Ticălos, Mara Verhoogt, and Nives Widauer. The exhibition explores feminism as a lens through which we can understand contemporary art, society, and identity.
Open at /SAC @ Malmaison (137C Calea Plevnei, Building B, 2nd Floor), the exhibition invites audiences to engage with diverse artistic practices that interrogate gender, power, and social norms from an international perspective.
“Why we should all be feminists is a non-exhaustive, depolarizing plea for a change in the way we respond to old dynamics and build new ones (individual, collective, governing, human-nonhuman, etc.), a shift towards a paradigm of equity, acceptance of diversity and differences, care and sustainability – which are more necessary today than ever before.
In 2012, Nigerian author and activist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave her million-times-shared talk entitled We Should All Be Feminists at the TEDxEuston innovation conference in London, advocating for a fairer and more equal world for all people regardless of gender and cultural identity. 1 It was a feminist manifesto that went around the world and promised great hope for the ongoing development of equality.
More than ten years later, in 2025, we seem to be experiencing an international backlash. Although much has been achieved in terms of legal equality for women, the reality of life is different. The international tradwife trend, as well as discussions about stay-at-home allowances in Austria, propagate a backward-looking worldview and thus oppose actual gender equality. In Austria, one in three women currently experiences violence and the number of femicides is alarmingly high compared to the EU average. Gender still influences social position, resources, rights, economic interests, and perspectives.
“Gender matters. Men and women experience the world differently. Gender colors the way we experience the world. But we can change that,” says Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Feminist artists have achieved a great deal in the fight for equality, but “the achievements of our generation are fragile,” warns Annegret Soltau, one of the most important feminist artists of the 1970s. She makes it clear that the achievements of the international feminist avant-garde formed in 1968 and IntAkt (International Action Group of Female Visual Artists), founded in Austria in 1977, must be reinforced and underpinned on a daily basis.
So, where do we stand today, almost 50 years after the IntAkt artists succeeded in questioning/challenging the mechanisms of power in society and gender relations? What kind of society are we longing for?” (curatorial text)
The exhibition Why We Should All Be Feminists can be visited until February 14, 2026, at /SAC @ Malmaison, from Thursday to Saturday, 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM.
The exhibition is organized by /SAC – The Space for Contemporary Art and the Austrian Cultural Forum, with the support of Ministry for European and International Affairs of the Republic of Austria, through its program “Calliope. Join the Dots”
