In the exhibition “Bittersweet,” we enter an in-between space. We are accustomed to moving through spaces. We enter them, leave them, and share them with others. In an increasingly interconnected world, access to other worlds seems almost a given. But how much do we actually know about the experiences, feelings, and inner worlds of those closest to us? And where does the line begin between what we see and what we merely think we understand? Reda’s works invite us to set aside these familiar assumptions for a moment. They do not tell the whole story or offer definitive explanations. Instead, they leave room for the indeterminate, for sensations that elude clear language, and for stories that need not be fully accessible. What initially appears to be a gateway to another world always becomes, in the process, an encounter with one’s own perspective. What we recognize in the other therefore speaks not only of them, but equally of ourselves.

May Reda, born in 2001 in Freiburg im Breisgau, lives and works in Vienna; she is currently studying at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. She explores spaces not merely as physical locations, but as vessels of memory, experience, and sensation. While we are repeatedly confronted in our lives with personal as well as societal setbacks, repression, and fears, May Reda faces these head-on and reflects them within herself. Her works open up distinct visual spaces in which color, materiality, the body, and space intertwine, giving rise to a reality that defies a single interpretation.
These spaces are shaped by the wealth of experiences, knowledge, and sensations of a young artist who consciously, carefully, and honestly confronts the destructive and painful forces of repression and turning a blind eye, reflecting on them and making them visible. In doing so, May Reda creates a universal sense of connectedness. Her art leads into the spaces in between—between closeness and distance, the visible and the hidden, the familiar and the foreign.