In her exhibition ‘My Austria’, Ramesch Daha transforms archival postcards into monumental blue murals that unsettle familiar narratives of nationhood, memory, and belonging.
18 June 2026
At TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tirol, the Austrian artist reimagines idyllic postcard imagery through her signature monochromatic painting technique, bringing together romantic landscapes with testimonies from Austro-fascism and fragments of her personal archive. What emerges is an exhibition that resists nostalgia, instead asking viewers to confront the unstable relationship between history, representation, and remembrance. In this interview, Daha reflects on archives, repetition, painterly memory, and the politics hidden within seemingly innocent images.
Suzette Bell-Roberts: You use postcards as a starting point to explore Austrian identity. What interested you in this format, and how does enlarging them change their meaning?
Ramesch Daha: I was interested in postcards because they are small objects that carry very large ideas about identity. Since the late Habsburg Empire, postcards have repeated certain images of Austria, such as beautiful mountains, rivers, happy people, and idyllic landscapes.
They shape a shared image of Austria that many people immediately recognise.
I wanted to work with these familiar motifs because they seem innocent at first, but they also carry ideology and memory.
By enlarging them into murals, the images become almost overwhelming. You cannot consume them casually anymore like a postcard in your hand. They become physical and confrontational. At the same time, because they are copied by hand and painted in blue, the images feel fragile and distant, almost like fragments of memory.
TAXISPALAIS was once a post office. How did this history influence the way you approached the exhibition and its themes of communication and circulation?
The history of TAXISPALAIS was very interesting for the exhibition. The building itself already carries a history of sending and exchanging messages. The postcard became a natural starting point because the first postcard was sent within the Habsburg Empire, and postcards are deeply connected to the production and circulation of national identity.
I liked the idea that these images return to a former post office, but transformed. Instead of circulating privately between people, they now occupy the walls publicly. I was also thinking about how histories circulate – what is remembered, what disappears, what remains hidden inside archives or family stories.
Your blue monochrome technique feels both archival and distant. What does working in this limited palette allow you to express?
The blue monochrome creates a certain distance from the original material. It takes away the effect of colour and shifts the image into another space between memory blueprint archive and disappearance.
For me, the technique is connected to copying and studying. I paint in order to understand and to memorise. The blue also unifies very different materials: postcards, documents, letters, and photographs. They begin to exist in the same emotional and temporal space. The monochrome slows down perception and creates a moment where looking and thinking interrupt each other.
The exhibition brings together postcard imagery and testimonies from Austro fascism. How do you work with the tension between these familiar images and difficult histories?
The tension is already present in the material itself. I didn’t invent it. The postcards existed, the testimonies existed, but historically, they are rarely seen together. Austria often presents itself through beautiful and harmonious images, while difficult histories remain less visible. By placing the testimonies directly into these landscapes, the images begin to shift. The viewer moves between attraction and discomfort. I am interested in that unstable moment when an image suddenly feels strange and shifts away from what we know.
The works ask whether ideology already exists inside these images or whether context changes how we read them.
You often describe your process as copying in order to understand. How does this approach shift the role of the artist in telling history?
I don’t approach the archive as someone who wants to illustrate or explain history. My process is closer to listening or studying. Through repetitive copying and drawing, I spend time with the material. It becomes a physical way of thinking.
I am not trying to create a final interpretation. I am more interested in opening archives and bringing materials into the present. The viewer makes the connections themselves. In that sense, my role is less about authority and more about attention and transmission.
Your detailed engagement with archives suggests both care and intensity. What draws you to this repetitive and meticulous way of working with memory
Repetition is a form of remembering. When I copy something by hand, I spend a long time looking at it. Details that might otherwise disappear become visible. It’s a slow process and also an emotional one.
I think this way of working comes from a desire to protect fragile histories from disappearing. Especially with personal archives, there is always the awareness that documents can be lost, destroyed, or forgotten. Reproducing them through painting and drawing becomes another form of preservation.
The story of Sigmund Klein introduces a personal layer to the exhibition. How do you balance personal history with broader national narratives?
The story of Sigmund Klein is deeply personal, but at the same time, it is also a very Austrian story, and through this family archive, larger political and social structures become visible, such as antisemitism, deportation, class labour, and displacement.
I never wanted to separate private history from national history because they are connected. Large historical events always enter everyday life and family structures. At the same time, I try not to dramatise the material. I work very closely with the documents themselves and allow them to speak through their presence.
You leave interpretation open to the viewer. What kind of response or reflection do you hope audiences will have when encountering “My Austria”?
I don’t expect one specific interpretation. For me, it is important that viewers actively position themselves in relation to the works. I hope the exhibition creates a space where looking becomes unstable and familiar images suddenly raise questions.
The exhibition is about memory, but memory always happens in the present. So the question is not only what these materials meant historically, but also what they mean now, in 2026, and how we read them today.
This exhibition was on view at TAXIS Palais Kunsthalle Tirol, in Austria, from 14 March until 7 June 2026.
