www.ernstlima.com, @ernst_lima
Work: 1. Attitude V, 2. Profile Covered in Flashlight, 3. Staring into Mercury.
1 + 2: 2023, aquatint etching; 3: 2024, drawing on paper
Prize of the Province of Lower Austria, endowed with EUR 4,000 and a curated insight into the art collection of the Province of Lower Austria
Prize Donor: Province of Lower Austria, represented by Hermann Dikowitsch (Head of the Department of Arts & Culture of the Province of Lower Austria, on behalf of Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner)
Laudatory Speech: Anna Mustapic (Project Coordinator & Curator of the Erich Grabner Prize), on behalf of Alexandra Grausam (Curator and Cultural Manager)
About the Work
Ernst Lima is a Vienna-based transmedia artist. In her graphic works, she combines analog and digital techniques to explore the transformation of time and memory. Her innovative methodology, including aquatint etching, creates a fascinating archive of the present that continuously unfolds new layers of meaning.
Jury Statement
Ernst Lima is a Vienna-based transmedia artist, sound designer, and composer whose graphic work is distinguished not only by its innovative techniques but, above all, by its profound reflection on time and its archiving.
The basis of Lima’s graphic works is always a figurative drawing. Through multiple, alternating analog and digital processes, the drawing is continuously altered and fragmented, gradually distancing itself from its original meaning. Lima allows the drawing space for transformation. Repeated analog reworking of the collage and the traditional technique of aquatint etching are combined with digital processes and UV light - a methodology developed by Lima herself. Each new layer does not replace the previous one but instead connects with it, penetrates it, and carries it forward.
Within this constant layering of analog and digital processes resonates the idea that time does not proceed linearly but is in a state of continuous transformation.
Ernst Lima’s distinctive visual language - evident in her graphic works as well as in her compositions and performances - demonstrates that the attempt to capture time does not result in the mere documentation of moments, but in the transformation of material into memory, alive in its multiplicity and continually unfolding anew.
Through her artistic practice, Lima creates a visual archive of the present. Her works are a powerful example of how art can grasp time in all its complexity and preserve it in an enduring - and deeply moving - way.
[For the Jury: Alexandra Grausam]