Francisco Carolinum Linz: Welcome to the “Süssmilch Sanatorium”

Exhaustion may set in given the state of the world. And with it the longing for a safe or at least healing place. A “sanatorium” like the one the artist Sophia Süßmilch built on the first floor of the Francisco Carolinum in Linz – one in which feminist art is taken further. “Women create beautiful living spaces and make them comfortable,” says the Munich woman with a smile as she welcomes her shoeless guests, in front of whom a clinically white, comfortably soft plush carpet stretches out.

The wheelchair is real

The Munich artist worked and lived here for 30 days. You could visit the 39-year-old for two hours a day. Her “Süssmilch Sanatorium” is now open to visitors in the exhibition of the same name, curated by Gabriele Spindler, until the end of January.

Is it conducive to convalescent sleep, that monumental bed in the middle of the room that catches the visitor’s eye? Flowing hair flows from the round bowl, which at first glance reveals a starry sky, and at second: teeth against a blue background, alluding to the myth of the “toothed vagina”, which Freud took up for his fear of castration.

Süßmilch has collected insights from countless conversations about the state of the world and derived a formula from them. As a kind of brainstorming session, it adorns an entire wall: saving the world branches out from “fulfillment in the moment” to “cannibalism”. Your purpose? That it doesn’t reveal itself to you. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” says Süßmilch, explaining her satire of simple answers from right-wing populism.

Welcome to the sanatorium’s spa room, including sauna and massage table. Under the latter – like a car mechanic – visitors could look into the artist’s eyes during her massage. Only one in ten who accepted her invitation was a man, Süßmilch says of close encounters in which tears were shed.

Good reading, which is found everywhere in the sanatorium, is healing for the spirit, such as Ken Krimstein’s graphic novel “The Three Lives of Hannah Arendt”.

Süßmilch portrayed her conversation partners and “doctors” in large format – where she fell from the ladder and broke her heel bone. The wheelchair in the corner is an irony of fate.

Info: Linz, Museumstr. 2 p.m., until Jan. 28, Tue-Sun/Fri, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., closed Monday, 0732 7720 522 00, ooekultur.at

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