Gabriele Edlbauer and Julia S. Goodman

Welcome to the world of Gabbygail, Gabriele Edlbauer and Julia S. Goodman’s reality-adjacent character. As you can see from her studio apartment, Gabbygail loves the tradwife lifestyle and worships powerful right-wing women in politics. She is obsessed with girlboss Condoleezza Rice, dreams about Giorgia Meloni and Sanae Takaichi’s homoerotic encounters, and celebrates the mentorship of iron ladies Margaret Thatcher and Alice Weidel. Gabbygail follows Austria’s ex–Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl’s beauty tips and morning affirmations as she prepares to dance with Vladimir Putin at her Styrian dream wedding.

In their playfully surreal combination of fan merch and chintz, fact and fiction, Edlbauer and Goodman highlight the ambiguity of these powerful women and their politics: After breaking the glass ceiling in their careers, they believe that women should also sweep away the glass—literally, not metaphorically.

Gabriele Edlbauer (1988, Linz, Austria) is an artist who works across sculpture and installation, with a generous interpretation of what these terms might mean. In her practice, she pursues puns, associations, misreadings, and coincidences until they develop their own logic. Her works have been exhibited internationally, including at Belvedere 21, Vienna; Dortmunder Kunstverein; Haus der Geschichte Österreich, Vienna; Austrian Cultural Forum New York; Luckman Gallery, Los Angeles; Le Wonder, Paris; and Donumenta, Regensburg. Edlbauer has received, among others, the Erste Bank MehrWERT Award in 2019 and the Karl Anton Wolf Prize in 2013. She lives in Vienna.

Julia S. Goodman (1987, New York, USA) is an artist whose gestural, colorful paintings relate to the culinary and consumer worlds, to craft and memory. Goodman’s practice often tests the boundaries of excess and accessibility and looks into what our relation to objects and surfaces says about ourselves. Her work has been shown at institutions including Belvedere 21, Vienna; Künstlerhaus Wien; MQ Art Box, Vienna; Galerie Raum mit Licht, Vienna; Galerie Zeller van Almsick, Vienna; Sophie Tappeiner (hosted by Zahorian & Van Espen Gallery, Bratislava); Le Wonder, Paris; VBKÖ, Vienna; and Athens Museum of Queer Arts. Goodman lives in Vienna.