Forget about your girlfriend and meet us at the hotel room.

On 17 May 2024, we rented a hotel room at the Intercontinental in Vienna and organized an exhibition without consulting the hotel. We showed paintings, a collaborative photographic work named Cuccälana and asked 5 friends if they could write a text for us on the subject of „Intercontinental/Hotel“. Out of this came a booklet. In the series of photographs Cuccälana, the iconic poses and facial expressions of the former politician, singer, and porn star Cicciolina are recreated. Ilona Staller, who became known in the 1970s and 80s under her artist name Cicciolina, used nudity as a means of political and social provocation, famously baring her breasts for political campaigning. As an homage to and continuation of the questions raised by her work and persona—such as the role of the model, her aesthetic blending dreaminess, bizarreness, and sexiness, and the question of why she has not been integrated into the art canon—we created our photographic series. To what extent is nudity still provocative? What is the relationship between photographer and model? What happens if everyone is both? Where is the line between empowerment and the reproduction of gendered stereotypes? In addition to this work, we were interested in the role of painting as a decorative medium in the hotel. How indifferent does painting have to be for it to hang in a hotel? What happens when you try to incorporate pictures into the room? What happens to the room itself? And what to the paintings?