Mâna care taie

Together with her mother, who lives in Romania, Viennese artist Alexandra Tatar volunteered as a harvest worker on an Austrian vineyard in the fall of 2020. The video work Mâna care taie [Cutting Hand], which is based on this experience, reflects Tatar's own situation and the attempt to make the power structures within Europe visible. "Alongside the monotony of the endlessly stretching workplace, the women's private lives can be compressed into just one static shot. The focal point of their lives is the room-filling king-size bed on which they eat their soup while negotiating the current reality of their lives: Overtime, lack of infrastructure, austerity measures, broken washing machines, cold showers and the right time to ask for their wages - precarious working and living conditions that the artist seems to know how to deal with better than the mother." (Michelle Koch)