exhibitions

WAVES–RECEDE–REFORM

Irena Eden & Stijn Lernout in dialogue with Julia Fröhlich-Siegl and Özlem Sultan Çolak

04/12/2026 – 02/01/2027

Opening: Thursday, December 03, 2026, 6 pm
with lecture by Julia Fröhlich-Siegl
Venue: philomena+ project room, Heinestraße 40, 1020 Vienna

Inauguration of the in-situ installation in the staircase: Thursday, December 03, 2026, 5 pm
Venue: Institut français, Praterstraße 38, 1020 Vienna

Irena Eden & Stijn Lernout, “Waves–Recede–Reform”, 2026, photography

The Mediterranean lingua franca was spoken in many port cities around the Mediterranean between the 11th and 20th centuries. It was the language of sailors and traders, born out of their encounters and the need to communicate. In an artistic research project, Irena Eden & Stijn Lernout explored this hybrid language, which later became known as Sabir. In the process, they created a video work featuring footage of Mediterranean coastlines and water surfaces. Edited in a collage-like style, it is accompanied by an audio track in Darija and French. Photographs, objects and an in-situ installation deepen the abstract, atmospheric exploration of the Mediterranean region, its hybrid identities and points of contact. To complement the artistic works on display, Julia Fröhlich-Siegl and Özlem Sultan Çolak contribute their academic research projects on migration and mobility in the post-Ottoman border region to the exhibition in the form of a text and a lecture.

artists

IRENA EDEN & STIJN LERNOUT

(1974 Hamburg / 1972 Antwerp), have been living and working in Vienna since 2008. Since 2004, they have been creating project-based and often participatory works on mobility, shifting boundaries and socio-political spaces. They studied in Kiel, Sarajevo and Berlin-Weißensee. Numerous exhibitions, interventions in public spaces, residencies (including Le Cube Rabat and Cité des Arts Paris) and publications, amongst them In loser Anordnung (2021) and Circle Surface Sun (2020).

researchers

JULIA FRÖHLICH-SIEGL

is a postdoctoral assistant at the Department of Near Eastern Studies (University of Vienna, Austria). She is a former recipient of the DOC-fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2023-2025) and ifk Junior fellowship (2024-2025). In her PhD thesis, she discussed the flight of Greek Jews across the Aegean Sea, particularly focusing on the interplay of refugee agency and rescue networks. In her current postdoctoral project, she explores migration between Crete, Greece, and the Ottoman Empire / Turkey through the lens of space, governmental power, refugeedom, and memory. She has published widely on trans-Aegean migration, Greek Jews during the Holocaust, and the spatiality of forced migration.

ÖZLEM SULTAN ÇOLAK

is a PhD Candidate and University Assistant (Prae Doc) at the Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Vienna. Her research focuses on migration, collective memory, and identity formation, with particular emphasis on the Armenian diaspora in Latin America. She holds an MSc in History from Bilkent University and an MSc in Latin and North American Studies from Middle East Technical University. Her work engages with memory studies, diaspora studies, and global history.