Val Holfeld

Val Holfeld, *1995*, is a stage & costume designer, curator, and co-founder of the Collective Zirkusgasse (est. 2023) from Vienna, currently based in Brussels. In their practice, they use scenography as a curatorial tool to question spatial norms and to imagine spaces shaped by emotional logic rather than linear narratives. Holfeld describes themself as a stage curator, creating exhibitions that function as performative situations. Atmospheres, shared vulnerability, friction, and moments of chaotic resistance form the core of these spaces, which become sites for collective memory and activist urgencies. Humour, pop culture, and queer aesthetics are central strategies in their work, breaking down curatorial authority into alternative modes of engagement. Humour acts as a political device — disrupting conventions, fostering connection, and resisting solemnity as a standard of exhibition-making.

 Holfeld’s curatorial perspective is inseparable from their identity and lived experience as a queer, non-binary person. Though shaped by access to middle-upper-class, white cultural spaces, their work emerges from the friction of inhabiting these spaces without belonging to their norms. They see embodiment itself as a curatorial method: a way of knowing, resisting, and imagining otherwise. Since 2023, Holfeld has curated exhibitions in Off-spaces at Ve.sch [2025], Collective Zirkusgasse, Paviljeon Gent [2026]. In gallery contexts such as Tart, Klaus & Elisabeth Thomann [2024], Kunsthal Ghent [2026], and creating stage designs, for example at Solstice Festival Helsinki [2026] or Tanzquartier Vienna [2024], while working as a costume/-stage production manager & assistant mainly in Opera productions, for example with Opera Amsterdam, Nikakai Opera Foundation Tokyo, Opera Stuttgart. Their long-term aspiration is to establish an independent art space for and with faggots, queers, and their fairies.

 www.valholfeld.com