Rotor Graz presents A Parable for Endings and Beginnings We Don't Know Yet, Part 1: The Giant Bird

Rotor Graz presents A Parable for Endings and Beginnings We Don't Know Yet, Part 1: The Giant Bird, curated by Margarethe Makovec and Anton Lederer, from 29 May to 1 August and from 24 August to 5 September 2026.

This is the first exhibition in a series focusing on mythological creatures appearing across different eras and cultures. They accompany transformation, challenge the familiar and invite us to embrace uncertainty and change.

The series at Rotor Graz is inspired by a lecture by the philosopher and founder of The Emergence Network, Báyò Akómoláfé.

The first part takes its starting point from the Giant Bird. In Akómoláfé's work, this is Ziz, who is associated with air and the atmosphere but also establishes a connection to the earth.

This encourages us to look upwards, whilst at the same time critically questioning the cycles we live in and what sustains us.

As part of the exhibition, the AYOCOTL Seed Library for All will also begin operations. And just outside, on Orpheumgasse, a parklet, a small green island, invites visitors to pause.

Part 1: The Giant Bird Participating Artists

Entrance

Ernst Koslitsch ( Echo Keepers 1 + 2, formwork panels, screws, paint, 2026)

Two figures over three metres tall at the entrance, built from construction-site formwork panels whose signs of wear are kept rather than sanded away. Koslitsch is interested in the moment a mark turns into a ritualised narrative, a myth.

Entrance room

Aliz Farkas (The World Keeps Spinning / Collection of World Models, sheep's fleece, wool, fur, feathers, wax, 2025-26)

A freshly shorn sheep's fleece shaped into a world map, referencing the colonisation of landscape through the wool industry. Nearby, a planetary system of larger and smaller bodies covered in second-hand furs and feathers.

Elisabeth von Samsonow (Buchberg Epic for Diana and Titania, mural, watercolours, paintings, objects, 2026)

A multi-dimensional diary of the Buchberg, a site in Lower Austria facing a proposed wind farm inside the breeding grounds of imperial and white-tailed eagles. Von Samsonow performs as an eagle on opening day.

Room 2

Vanja Krajnc, In the Deep Woods, glass, painting, ceramics, paper, papier-mâché, 2020-26

A deep, imagined forest of wondrous plants, animals and organic forms, read through an animistic view in which mountains, rivers and weather also carry a spirit.

Edda Strobl, Seltene Sorten [Rare Varieties], scraperboard drawings, 2025/26

Universes scraped out of black scraperboard, from interior views of bodies to cosmic constellations, worlds set before or after human dominance.

Room 3

Daily Rhythms Collective (Daniela Brasil, Otto Oscar Hernández Ruiz, SHIN Hyo Jin), Fugitive Soils / L'aMoUR, willow, cushions, sound, video, 2022-26

A woven willow nest large enough to enter, built with many hands, paired with an altar of fugitive soils from each artist's childhood home and a video following the River Mur.

Room 4

Lala Raščić, Frau Ritter 2.0, multimedia installation, slide projectors, sound, 2024-25

An audiovisual narrative on women and snakes, built around botanist Hilda Ritter-Studnička and Sarajevo's former Zmijarnik serpent room, ending in an unpublished fable of a snake princess.

Catrin Manoli, Egg, ostrich egg, ribbon, snails, pearls, light, tree stump, 2026

A decorated, illuminated ostrich egg referencing Coptic church tradition, set above a tree stump from a felled Linz park where activists fought, and lost, against a planned motorway.

Atrium

Catherina Jarau, Anna Mora Moll, Laila Reichenpfader, Release the Kraken, papier-mâché, wire, textiles, wool, 2026

A hybrid creature in the atrium with a vulture's head, moth wings and six booby legs, gynandromorphic and deliberately unfinished, set to transform further over the coming months.

Corridor

Dominika Trapp, Life Beyond…, ink and watercolour, 2025

Four drawings of a figure at a cave's threshold, turned toward the exit, a personal meditation on whether it is responsible to bring a child into this world.

Café

AYOCOTL Seed Library for All (Forum Urbanes Gärtnern, Andreas Motschiunig, Daniela Brasil, Florian Perl)

A working seed library in rotor's café, storing and distributing plant seeds on the condition that more are returned than taken.

Florian Perl, Xochitl, mural, 2026

A wall-filling mural built from the shapes of seeds Perl studied for the piece, its title drawn, like Ayocotl, from the Nahuatl word for flower.

The exhibition closes after 1 August and reopens on 24 August, and at least one work is built around that gap. The hybrid creature hanging in the atrium, part vulture, part moth, part booby, is described by its makers as unfinished on purpose, and it is expected to look different when the doors open again.

A few rooms away, the seed library runs on a comparable logic, it only continues if more is returned than taken out. Two structures in one building, both refusing to settle into a final state before the exhibition ends.

Rotor Contemporary on Instagram

AYOCOTL Seed Library / cooperation
Forum Urbanes Gärtnern on Instagram

Curators
Margarethe Makovec
Anton Lederer

Artists / participants
Aliz Farkas on Instagram
Catrin Manoli on Instagram
Daily Rhythms Collective on Instagram
Daniela Brasil on Instagram
Edda Strobl on Instagram
Elisabeth von Sasonow on Instagram
Ernst Koslitsch on Instagram
Florian Perl on Instagram
Lala Rascic on Instagram
Otto Hernandez on Instagram
Shin Hyojin on Instagram
Trapp Dominika on Instagram
Vanja Krajnc on Instagram

Catherina Jarau
Anna Mora Moll
Laila Reichenpfader

Cooperation partner, optional
DRAMATIKER|INNENFESTIVAL Graz on Instagram