KunstImDorf - SPAZIO AUREO

Spazio Aureo is a site-specific art project by Julia Bornefeld, commissioned by the Tourism Association of Seis am Schlern and curated by Eva von Ingram Harpf. From May 23 to October 18, 2026, it transforms the village’s public space into a cohesive artistic installation.

In the 1960s, Arte Povera placed simple, “poor” materials and their transformation at the center of artistic practice, aiming to reconnect art with life, time, and experience. For years, Julia Bornefeld has drawn on this core idea in her contemporary work, expanding it with her own atmospheric and participatory dimension.

This is also evident in her project Spazio Aureo in Seis am Schlern, where the artist brings old, collected furniture from private contexts into the public space. These objects, bearing traces of use and memory, are coated in gold and thereby transformed. The gold lends them a new, almost sacred presence without erasing their history. At the same time, some pieces are artistically modified, developing their own poetic quality and becoming narrative objects.

Furthermore, the furniture recalls the history of Seis’s culture of hospitality, in which welcoming guests, shared lingering, and temporary arrival play an important role. This historical dimension connects with the present as the objects, placed in public space, once again become places of pause and encounter.

The installation invites both locals and visitors to linger, use, and move the furniture. In doing so, new social spaces emerge within the village, continuously changing through their use. Encounter, memory, and the present merge and become part of the artwork itself.

These objects are not merely placed, but are also partially artistically altered and estranged, giving them a surreal, almost dreamlike character.

The title Spazio Aureo - “golden space” - precisely describes this approach: through the gilded and transformed everyday objects, the entire village becomes a poetically charged space where reality, memory, and dream merge.