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Artist Jann Haworth will be in conversation with art historian Jo Applin, discussing her artistic practice with a focus on her soft sculptures, including Snake Lady (1969–71). Closely associated with British Pop Art and the countercultural spirit of 1960’s Swinging London, Haworth’s work draws on Hollywood film production practices and domestic textile techniques. Her textile sculpture Old Lady (1962) is one of a handful of female representations that appear on the cover of the famous Beatles album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” which Haworth designed together with British artist Peter Blake. From the 1960s to the present day, Haworth’s practice has been based on a de-hierarchical understanding of artistic agency, which is not only expressed through her interest in popular culture and everyday situations, „low art“ materials including fabric, cardboard, or vinyl, and craft techniques such as sewing and patchwork but also in collaborative projects realized with different members of the community.  

Jann Haworth’s Snake Lady was acquired by the Austrian Ludwig Foundation in 2021 and is on permanent loan to mumok. The work is on view at mumok’s collection exhibition “Mapping the Sixties” until September 7, 2025.

The talk will be in English.

Jo Applin is Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the History of Art at The Courtauld, London. 

She is an editor of Oxford Art Journal and the author of numerous articles as well as several publications, including Lee Lozano: Not Working (Yale University Press, 2018), Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America (Yale University Press, 2012), and Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Room-Phalli’s Field (Afterall and MIT Press, 2012). She is currently writing about art and ageing since the 1960s, in which she discusses Haworth’s soft sculptures.

Jann Haworth has worked as an artist and educator since the 1960s both in the UK and US. Since 1997 Haworth and Liberty Blake have collaborated on a number of educational projects. These include creating arts facilities, an arts-based Charter School, Recycling Hot Glass Studio in Sundance, Utah, Arts Lab for The Leonardo, Utah, and most recently the Work in Progress mural project (2016–present). The project consists of images created with the public in guided workshops, which are then collaged on to panels by Liberty Blake. The mural now consists of 24 panels and is 30m in length. Haworth’s works are represented in international collections—such as mumok, Vienna; Ludwigforum Aachen, Germany; Pallant House Gallery, Chichester and Tate, UK; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA. Her work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions since the 1960s, including Gazelli Art House, London and Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK; Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris and MAMAC, Nice, France; MORE Museum, Gorssel, The Netherlands; mumok and Kunsthalle, Vienna.

With many thanks to mumok

In her submitted project, Mariama de Brito Henn, a PhD-Candidate at the Cultural Heritage Chair at the University of Vienna, relates her research to the artistic practice of Brazilian artist Sonia Gomes, whose works are part of the Foundation’s collection. The grant from the Austrian Ludwig Foundation will enable Mariama de Brito Henn to travel to Brazil and Cuba in order to develop her project further, which she describes as follows:

“Memory of the Material – Textile and Memory Practices of the Diaspora explores how the rich costume and textile practices and traditions of afro-spiritual religions such as Candomblé in Brazil and Santería in Cuba can function as an alternative archive of the cultural memory of the African diaspora, formed by the transatlantic slave trade. The research thus embeds the works of Sonia Gomes, whose artistic expression and understanding is deeply rooted in the traditions of Candomblé, in a broader historical and cultural context of an often-overlooked part of the Black Atlantic.”