Valentino Skarwan

Valentino.skarwan@gmail.com
(Full portfolio available by email upon request)

Instagram

Valentino Skarwan is an Austrian–Guatemalan multidisciplinary artist and performer living and working between Vienna and Guatemala City. Their practice moves between performance, installation, and site-specific interventions, constructing environments that unfold as fragmented scenes in which bodies, materials, and gestures carry desire, intimacy, and ecological attention. Skarwan approaches the body as a porous and relational system, shaped by its surroundings and entangled with memory, residue, and transformation.

Their work unfolds across formats and contexts, from stages to exhibition spaces and public sites. Traces, residues, and unfinished gestures function as narrative elements, allowing spaces to hold quiet hauntings and embodied histories.

Skarwan’s work has been presented in institutional and independent contexts internationally, both through their own projects and in collaboration, including Mumok (Vienna), Neuer Kunstverein Wien, Zeitraumexit (Mannheim), Kiosko (Santa Cruz, Bolivia), MoMA Warsaw, Tanzhaus Düsseldorf, and Sharp Projects (Copenhagen), among others. Recent works include Some Foreplay, Lovers of Compost, presented at Belvedere 21 (2023) as part of Über das Neue and at Klima Biennale Wien (2024), and Lost Encounters, They Cling, presented at Spit Festival (Tanzquartier Wien, 2025), which received the runner-up award for the Queer Art Prize (2026).

They have performed in works by Doris Uhlich at ImPulsTanz Festival and Wiener Festwochen, and have collaborated with artists including Gelatin, Young Boy Dancing Group, Hugo Canoilas, Daniela Georgieva, Annie Sprinkle, and Beth Stephens, among others

Their project We All Shapeshift received the Simacek Art Award (2025) and was exhibited at Künstlerhaus as part of the Ö1 Talent Scholarship (2024) nomination.

Education

2023 TransMediale Kunst/ Universität für angewandte Kunst, Wien-AT

2018-2026 Bildende Kunst/ Universität für angewandte Kunst, Wien-AT

2017–2018 Bildende Kunst/ Universität für künstlerische und industrielle Gestaltung, Linz-AT

Prices

2024 Ö1 Talents Scholarship (finalist) 

2025 Simacek Award (nomiated by Jakob Lena Knebl)

2026 Queer Art Prize (runner-up)

(Selected) solo EXHIBITIONS /PERFORMANCE

2025
Lost Encounters, They Cling 
Spitfestival
Tanzquartier
Vienna

2024
We All Shapeshift,
Ö1 Talentstipendium Finalist
KünstlerHaus

2024 
Picnic Crashers
Zeitraum Exit 
Mannheim

2023
Some Foreplay 
together with Andrius Mulokas
Perfromance Über das Neue
Belvedere 21,

2022
Todoterreno, 
with Vendula Fabianova,
Kiosko Gallery, BOL

(Selected) Group EXHIBITIONS /PERFORMANCE

2026  
Fluscia 
by Daniela Georgieva 
Tanzhaus Düsseldor, DE

2024
We all Shapeshift, 
Ideal Means
NeuerKunstverein, AT

2024
Chemeric Tendencies 
by Xava Mikosch
Sterischer Herbst, AT

2024
Pudertanz 
by Doris Uhlich, 
Bad Ischl Kulturhauptstadt Europa, AT

2024
Lovers of Compost
Klima Biennale
die Feldversuche


2024
A Ray of Light 
by Mary Szydlowska
MOMA, Warsaw

2023 
Groupshow 
curated by Lisa Jäger
Sharp projects, DK

2023
Melancholic Ground  
by Doris Uhlich,
Wienerfestswochen,AT

2023
more than naked 
by Doris Uhlich, 
Opening Impulstanz, AT

2021
A Rooster Alone does not Weave the Dawn 
invited by Hugo Canoilas, 
Quinta do Quetzal, POR

2021
Gelitin, 
Tiroler Landesmuseum 
Ferdinandeum, AT


2020

Habitat, (pandemicversion)
by Doris Uhlich, 
TQW Halle E, AT
  

PUBLICATIONS

Über das Neue 2024
Belvedere 21
2024

Auf der Suche nach einem kulturellen Attraktor, 
Off Image
2023

Die Feldversuche 
2021/2024

Burgtheater
Das Medium Kunst
2021/22