Sevda Chkoutova: A mole for mumok
Artist Talk
Tuesday, November 3, 2026, 7–9 pm

Only half of mumok rises above ground; the other extends deep below it. Here, in the new mumok Atelier, a mole has found a home. He can barely see, and most of what he knows about the world he learns through touch. Otherwise, however, he is not so different from us. Viennese artist Sevda Chkoutova created the mole for the new mumok Atelier as a playmate and companion for children and their many ideas. Her installation on level -3 traces the mole’s arrival at mumok and his continual transformations. It comprises a site-specific wall drawing and a series of display cases with peepholes, in which the mole takes on three-dimensional forms.

In conversation with General Director Fatima Hellberg and Assistant Curator Dora Cohnen, Chkoutova will discuss her approach to developing the mumok mole and the installation, as well as the idea of a body that includes us all. As she puts it: “In fact, it is about a single body. The mole is all of us. That is why it constantly takes on new forms that resemble ourselves.”

Sevda Chkoutova (*1978, Sofia, Bulgaria) has lived in Vienna since 1997 and works as an independent artist. At the centre of her practice are bodies, predominantly female bodies, and the experiences they undergo in society. In her often large-scale drawings in ink, graphite, and charcoal on paper, she interweaves psychological, social, and autobiographical themes, addressing taboos and the unspeakable with both sensitivity and humour. Her work has been presented in numerous international exhibitions, including at Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Neues Museum in Nuremberg, Frauenmuseum Hittisau, and the Austrian Cultural Forum New York. Several of her works are part of the mumok collection.