FORT/DA, an exhibition in collaboration with the University of Applied Arts - class Judith Eisler - shows works by students on the Sigmund Freud Museum's annual theme "Absence" in the museum's permanent exhibition.

Sculptures, paintings, animated drawings and installations: Twelve students from the Painting and Animated Film class present a total of eleven interventions in the mezzanine and the elevated ground floor as well as the courtyard of Berggasse 19, all of which deal with the absence of Freud's interior or selected psychoanalytical themes such as the uncanny, the unconscious or the dream.

“In the exhibition FORT/DA, students consider the forced dispersion of Freud’s person and belongings and the impact this absence has on what is now present at Berggasse 19.The twelve interventions placed throughout the museum allude to the current displays in different rooms. The various works are less about memory and more about articulating questions and associations as to what can be seen and what remains unseen.

Absence implies deprivation or lack and is activated by a longing for what might be missing. Using diverse materials such as dust, sound, projection, paint, clay, glass and metal, the students create work in which narrative content identifies absence as presence and rupture as possibility. An idea of what might have been emerges in the spaces between intervention, display and distance.”

Excerpt from the booklet text by Judith Eisler

The following students are represented with their works:

Baurjan Aralov
Luzie Bommert
Vivian Chiu Tseng
Leo Haslinger
Adam Meszaros
Erin Sankey
Lea Scholl&Leonie Roithner
Sophie Schagerl
Nikolija Stanojevic
Jesaja Aljoscha Trummer
Barbara Tunkowitsch
Marcus Wagner