Soft Parade
Exhibition Details:
Group exhibition that brought together Michel Aniol, Meike Kuhnert, Eva Funk, and Joshua Zielinski to Fabrikraum.
The four independent artists, who are all based in Berlin, had the ambition to engage with the exhibition space and create new works dealing with the specific conditions of this place and its local context.
Situated on the ground floor of a Gemeindebau, Fabrikraum is located on Johnstraße in Vienna’s 15th district. The busy two-lane street runs from the Schmelze—a former military exercise and parade ground—straight through the multicultural district of Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus and directly to the baroque palace Schloß Schönbrunn. ⭐️
The continuous movement on the busy street and the direct connection to the former military parade route produces a provoking setting in relation to the notion of a parade and its ambivalent contexts.
At first glance, a parade is simply a procession, traditionally in a specific formation and occurring on special occasions. A closer look, however, a parade has various underlying narratives spanning from the expression of deep-rooted cultural practices to political statements meant to bring about change.
From celebrations to protests, from traditional folk festivals to vulgar displays of military strength, a parade is not only a procession but also a means of expression and a platform for visibility.
Featuring:
Eva Funk is a Berlin-based Austrian artist working at the intersection of material experimentation, social imagination, and the environments we shape together. She studied sculpture and time-based media at the Berlin University of the Arts and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Her artistic work focuses on familiar yet often overlooked aspects of her surroundings—stories, actions, and moments of joy. She engages deeply with questions of solidarity, spatial dynamics, and aesthetics. Using diverse materials and methods, her interventions, installations, and interdisciplinary projects reimagine found environments to explore the relationships between objects, space, and language. Her work invites a playful re-evaluation of the social value of spaces, fostering a deeper appreciation for our complex interactions with the environments we inhabit. Since 2025 Eva Funk has directed a youth center that integrates animal-assisted education and interventions. Through daily interactions with horses, chickens, and small animals, the center fosters relational learning, co-agency, and cooperative care within a framework that emphasizes ecological responsibility, traditional crafts, and radical play. Eva Funk is committed to collaborative approaches in co-creating experiential spaces and exploring new modes of learning and teaching. She is involved in projects and collectives such as Kiosk des Arts, rotato press, Mindscape Universe, and BIG HIT. Alongside her artistic and educational practice, Funk works in consulting, group facilitation, mediation, and process-oriented change, supporting teams and institutions in navigating transitions and differing perspectives. These methodologies mirror the collaborative, experiential, and environment-centered principles present throughout her artistic work. She was Artist in Residence at institutions such as Cité internationale des Arts Paris, das fliegende Künstler:innenzimmer (Crespo Foundation), Artists Unlimited, Künstlerhaus Lukas, kunstwerk:krastal, and PRAKSIS Oslo. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is part of public collections in Austria, Germany, and France.
Joshua Zielinski Born 1986 Michigan, USA Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Michel Aniol was born 1983 in Tychy in Poland and migrated with his family to Nürnberg/ Germany in the late 1980's. Aniol studied visual arts and graduated from Weissensee Academy of Art Berlin in 2012, followed by a masterclass year in 2013 with Prof. Antje Majewski. He is working and living currently in Berlin/ Germany.
Aniol is co-founder and artistic director of the independent art project space stay hungry, Berlin. He curates and organizes in collaboration with the visual artist Meike Kuhnert various exhibition formats to provide artists and other cultural producers with a non-hierarchical, self-determined and financially independent platform of exchange and experimentation, helping to support alternative forms of art production and presentation.