martinamenegon

Overview

Martina Menegon, born in Italy in 1988, is a Vienna-based artist, curator, educator, and researcher whose practice bridges physical and digital realms with profound insight. Working between Austria’s cultural institutions and the boundless expanse of cyberspace, she has established herself as a leading voice in transmedia and extended reality art. Her multidisciplinary background—rooted in visual and performing arts from IUAV University in Venice and a diploma in Transmedia Art from the University of Applied Arts Vienna—infuses her creations with both technical precision and poetic sensitivity. As Senior Artist and Lecturer in Transmedia Art at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she teaches “Digital Design and Virtuality,” and as a PhD researcher, Menegon continually pushes the boundaries of how we perceive and inhabit hybrid identities.[1]

Her career trajectory reflects a seamless integration of artistic production, curatorial vision, and pedagogical commitment. Since 2020, she has served in pivotal roles at the CIVA Festival for New Media Art and sound:frame, including as Vice Director, Head of Extended Reality, and curator of the Area for Virtual Art platform. These positions have allowed her to shape international dialogues on immersive technologies while maintaining a rigorous studio practice. Represented by Artemis Gallery in Lisbon, Menegon’s work resonates across online and physical spaces, inviting viewers into intimate explorations of embodiment that feel both deeply personal and universally resonant.[2]

Artistic Style & Medium

Menegon’s practice centers on interactive and extended reality art, where she masterfully assembles physical and virtual elements into disorienting yet captivating experiences. She employs 3D scanning, immersive technologies such as VR and AR, and performative self-portraiture to construct chimeric bodies that blur the lines between flesh and code. Her installations often feature glitch aesthetics, uncanny distortions, and grotesque exaggerations that make the virtual tangible, evoking a sense of vulnerability and transformation. These works create spaces where viewers confront the fluidity of presence, experiencing how digital avatars can both fragment and reconstitute the self in real time.[3]

In pieces that span screen-based interactions to fully immersive environments, Menegon layers scanned body data with procedural animations and real-time inputs, fostering a dialogue between the tangible and the ethereal. Her use of platforms like Unity3D and custom VR setups allows for dynamic, responsive encounters that shift with the participant’s movements or choices. This technical sophistication is tempered by a raw, emotional core—her avatars often appear wounded, incomplete, or in states of perpetual becoming, mirroring the anxieties and possibilities of contemporary digital existence. The result is a style that is both rigorously conceptual and viscerally engaging, demanding active embodiment from its audience.[2]

Influences & Themes

Menegon draws from a rich tapestry of influences spanning post-digital theory, glitch feminism, and the legacy of performance art, while engaging deeply with contemporary discourses on identity, technology, and the body. Her explorations echo the fragmented self-portraiture of artists navigating virtual realms and the subversive potential of avatars as sites of resistance and reinvention. Academic engagements with experimental game culture and embodied structures further inform her approach, allowing her to weave together feminist perspectives on corporeality with the poetic possibilities of hybrid existence.[1]

Recurring themes in her oeuvre include the mechanics of digital embodiment, the hybrid and chimeric nature of contemporary bodies, and the poetics of the in-between. She probes the vulnerability of phygital selves, the fragmentation inherent in online identities, and the transformative power of continuous self-reinvention. Works often address genderplay, the uncanny valley of virtual intimacy, and the emotional resonances of proximity in mediated spaces—inviting reflection on how technology reshapes desire, presence, and relationality. Through these lenses, Menegon positions digital art as a subversive strategy for reclaiming agency amid technological acceleration.[4]

Notable Works & Exhibitions

Among Menegon’s standout solo presentations is the 2024 exhibition “you know me so well” at Galeria17 in Pristina, developed in collaboration with Ars Electronica, which delves into the fluidity of identity through interactive self-portraits and immersive assemblages. Earlier solos include “I’m sorry I made you feel that way” (2023) at Discotec in Vienna, “falling asleep” (2023) on objkt.one, and the touring iterations of “when you are close to me I shiver” (2020–2022), shown at MAK Vienna, Spark Art Fair, and VRAL Machinima Festival. Other significant solos encompass “It feels like home” (2021) at HeK – House of Electronic Arts and “What remains of myself” (2020) at k48, Vienna, each showcasing her signature blend of scanned bodies and virtual extensions.[1]

Her group exhibition history is equally expansive, with participation in The Wrong New Digital Art Biennale (multiple editions), Ars Electronica contexts, Upstream Gallery’s “Future Bodies” (2022), Vellum LA’s “POSTGENDER” (2023), and CIVA Festival presentations at Belvedere21. International venues span from the Musée de la Mine et du Développement durable in Belgium to online platforms like Verse Works and New Art City, underscoring her global reach. Permanent collections and festival circuits further highlight works such as “all alone, together” and avatar-based projects that have entered both digital and physical institutional holdings.[1]

Impact & Recognition

Menegon’s contributions have significantly advanced conversations around extended realities in contemporary art, bridging academic research with public engagement through her lectures, workshops, and curatorial initiatives. Her roles at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and CIVA Festival have mentored a new generation of artists navigating digital embodiment, while her international exhibitions affirm her status as a pivotal figure in new media. Recognition extends to jury positions, including for the Students Biennale of Digital Sculpture in Krakow, and features in major fairs such as ENTER Art Fair and DAFA Digital Art Fair.[1]

By consistently foregrounding the poetic and subversive dimensions of hybrid bodies, Menegon has influenced broader cultural understandings of identity in the age of AI and immersive technologies. Her work appears in diverse collections and continues to spark dialogues on vulnerability, transformation, and presence across physical and virtual spheres. As both practitioner and educator, she embodies the evolving role of the artist-researcher, ensuring that explorations of the phygital self remain central to contemporary discourse.

References