Maria Theresia and her 16 Children

Artist duo BitteBitteJaJa (Ulu Braun and Roland Rauschmeier) employed sixteen portraits of Maria Theresia’s children to combine little known historical facts about the lives of the legendary empress’ offspring and a powerful collage of images.
In a confident and refreshing way the two artists negate all visual and genre conventions and mount historical and scientific film material, commercials and ethnographic images, all digitally altered. As a result a Teletubby might be seen strolling through an 18th century royal garden and live exotic birds adorn what would appear to be the Habsburg coat of arms.
At the same time individual images associatively...