Valentino Skarwan

Valentino Skarwan (1998, born in Vienna and raised in Guatemala) lives and works between Vienna and Guatemala City. Like a spider s web, Skarwan interweaves performance, sculpture, installation, video, and photography into open and porous forms, fluid formats that resist rigid definitions. Their work explores fluid entities, questions of identity, and the urgency of rethinking new ways of being and their relationship to the environment. In 2025, Skarwan was awarded the Simacek Art Award for their multidisciplinary practice. They were nominated for the O1 Talent Scholarship in 2024 and presented work at Belvedere 21 in 2023 as part of the Uber das Neue performance program. They have collaborated and performed with artists and choreographers such as Doris Uhlich, Gelatin, Young Boy Dancing Group, Hugo Canoilas, Anne Sprinkler, and Beth Stephens. Artist Statement My artistic practice begins with the desire for encounters, with people, spaces, and non-human beings. This longing for exchange and connection is the starting point of my work. I create spaces where new forms of togetherness can emerge, with oneself, with others, and with the world. Always in a state of becoming, it is a space of possibility where bodies can exist but also dissolve. Through an interdisciplinary approach, I explore constructed narratives in which bodies and their entanglements with the environment take center stage. With a poetic and queer perspective, inspired by myths, indigenous cosmologies from Guatemala, and contemporary motifs, I examine how stories shape our perception of identity and reality. With family roots in both Guatemala and Austria, my work is shaped by the experience of moving between different traditions, languages, and perspectives. This in-betweenness is not a state of uncertainty for me but a space for speculation and the invention of new possibilities. I am interested in how identity, intimacy, and belonging are not fixed categories but are constantly reshaped through the stories we tell. The body, for me, is a site of memory and metamorphosis, always shifting, always evolving. My art is an invitation to see the world beyond a human-centered perspective. It challenges us to explore new forms of connection and empathy.