Swetlana Heger
with Plamen Dejanov
Growing up at the crossroads of post-socialist transition and global capitalism, Swetlana Heger shapes a multifaceted practice that interrogates the entanglements of art, identity, and economy. Her works—ranging from conceptual interventions to performative collaborations and sculptural forms—navigate a terrain where authorship blurs, objects become signs, and aesthetics flirt openly with the mechanisms of branding.
Heger’s engagement with corporate imagery, luxury culture, and institutional critique has long been both celebrated and controversial. Especially during her collaborative years with Plamen Dejanov, her art became inseparable from economic systems themselves—often not just reflecting them, but actively participating in them. In more recent years, shaped metal objects, meticulously hand-lacquered, function as enigmatic tokens: hybrid relics of a personal economy, referencing both industrial design and intimate introspection.
Her practice repeatedly explores the negotiation of public and private spaces, of visibility and invisibility, often challenging the role of the artist as both product and producer. She invites viewers to confront their expectations, to decode symbols of status and power, and to reconsider where art begins and commerce ends. Her sculptural presence insists on ambiguity, letting ideology and poetics coexist uneasily.
Swetlana Heger studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and completed postgraduate work at Musashino Art University in Tokyo. Her works has been shown in international institutions such as Vienna Secession, Centre Pompidou Paris, Artists Space New York, Moderna Museet Stockholm, Kunstmuseum Luzern etc. Her solo exhibitions have been hosted by spaces such as La Salle des Bains Lyon, Cabaret Voltaire Zurich, and Thierry Goldberg New York, while her work is part of major international collections including mumok Vienna, Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin, and the Zabludowicz Collection London.
EDUCATION
Video and Communication Art, Musashino Art University
Tokyo, Japan
Painting and Graphics, University of Applied Arts
Vienna, Austria
JURY
Erika Billeter
Gunter Damisch
Gregor Eichinger
Peter Noever
Achille Bonito Oliva
FINAL PROJECT
