Jimena Croceri

Natural dye paintings produced in collaboration with the river and the weather.

Four Stations: Mühlbach, Hammerpark, Traisen, Corvinus Straße

Jimena Croceri says that she collaborates with rivers. She conceives and creates water paintings in intimate codependence with local bodies of water and their temperaments. Her contribution to the art parcours is a series of water paintings that are found in the landscape along the route. The first are developed from the thought that water brings us—and frees us from—things. They are composed of coloured fabrics that are semi-submerged a few centimeters below the surface of the Mühlbach and are sensitive to change over time as the current, rain or sun wash over and seep into them. 

Here and there, we encounter twisted water paintings, which pay tribute to the labour of women, washing and wringing out fabrics on various riverbanks across time and space, all around the planet. These water paintings have been curled, twirled and squeezed and are now hanging over the stream, from one side to the other. As they slowly dry, the fabric becomes unevenly bleached out. 

Further on, we come across paintings made over time on the bank of the Traisen, where the artist has traced the fluctuation of the waves and the vibrations of the river. The coming and going of the delicate flow has made its mark in a series of works. Several of these hang above the water, like drying laundry. As we walk downstream, we also see pieces of fabric lying on the bank of the Traisen and held in place by stones chosen from the riverbed. As time goes by, paintings are created by the natural surroundings: the sun, the rain, the humidity and the changing level of the water. 

Jimena Croceri finds a poetic, respectful and visually arresting way to build a relationship with the River Traisen and the Mühlbach, addressing issues such as environmental personhood, hydrofeminism and planetary co-existence and enabling the currents, moments and movements to paint themselves. And so, by conversing with these bodies of water in St. Pölten, she is, in fact, speaking with and for the watery planet as a whole.

Jimena Croceri (1981) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Intention and experimentation, resistance and fluidity, characterize her artistic practice. In a laboratory method that is neither rational nor sterile but more curious than precise, her work consists of several main elements: time, opportunity, collaboration, correlation and listening. Producing collective knowledge together with others, both human and non-human, has been key to Croceri's practice. In her artistic practice she addresses themes such as water, hydrofeminism and other forms of communication through poetic experiences and collaborations with others around her.
She was an artist in residence at Flora ars+natura, Bogota in 2018 and received the Pernod Ricard Fellowship in 2020. Croceri has performed and exhibited her work at Piedras gallery, Buenos Aires (2023) The Listening Biennial, multiple locations (2023) Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires (2023), Ming Contemporary Art Museum, Shanghái (2021) Ausstellungsraum Klingental, Basel (2021), Raven Row gallery, London (2019), Cabaret Voltaire, Zürich (2019) among other cultural institutions.