Annamaria Kowalsky

Annamaria Kowalsky works at the edges and transitions of sound, image, material and perception. Her practice is interdisciplinary in the deepest sense: not as a combination of different media, but as a translation between sensory forms – music becomes space, touch becomes colour, gesture becomes form. Guided by a pronounced synaesthesia, she develops works in which the interplay of the senses becomes an artistic language in its own right. For her, composition is a series of structural studies on time, space and transformation – music as ephemeral architecture. Trained as a musician at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and with a doctorate in philosophy from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, she developed an independent artistic practice in parallel. She works with painting, photography, ceramic materials, sound, scent and movement to create temporary architectures that make the invisible audible and perceptible in a visible context. Her works are performed and exhibited worldwide: in concert halls, in exhibition contexts, in films and in walk-in installations. In 2022, she was the first artist to be invited to take part in the new residency programme of the Arvo Pärt Centre in Estonia. In the same year, she recorded her debut album with the Philharmonia Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios in London. Since then, she has continuously created new works at the interface of music, art and research – most recently a multidisciplinary violin concerto with audio-reactive visuals and complementary fragrance compositions. Annamaria Kowalsky lives and works in Vienna.