2 December 2026 – 14 March 2027
Opening: 1 December 2026, 6:30 pm

What happens when everyday objects belonging to people with HIV suddenly turn up in the middle of the city? In 1996, Franz Wassermann’s Austria-wide art project “BARBIE and KEN are HIV-positive” used exactly 2,100 objects to draw attention to the lived reality of those affected. Shrink-wrapped in plastic and marked with a green dot, they hung in six Austrian cities (Vienna, Linz, Graz, Salzburg, Innsbruck and Bregenz) on billboards and in train stations, bookshops and cafés. The project confronted passers-by with their own fear of contact. In the years that followed, it was continued in Munich, Burghausen and London. Thirty years later, Qwien is presenting the objects framed and hung in a museum setting for the first time. The focus is on what has changed in three decades of dealing with HIV and what still holds true. Photographs and documents from the project archive tell the story of how the action came about, while the artist looks back on it from the present in a recorded conversation.

Franz Wassermann lives and works as a sculptor in Vienna. Since 1989 he has developed actions and installations that make social power relations, exclusion and taboo subjects visible. His work deals with HIV and stigma, sexualised violence, memory culture, migration and the power of images, among other topics. His projects often take place in public space and in dialogue with those affected, activists, experts and institutions.