Ursula Mayer is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans across experimental film, photography, performance, and sculpture. Her practice interweaves myth, biopolitics, and the semiotics of cinema to visualize and ruminate upon future post-human ontology. Mayers work is deeply informed by interdisciplinary research, collaborations with artists, theorists, and scientists. Known for her visually compelling, poetic, and multi-voiced works which transcend the boundaries of traditional film and point to an expanded field of media practices where political action, direct engagement, and collective organization converge.

Her cinematic language destabilizes linear narratives, offering non-hierarchical perspectives on time, knowledge, and representation. Her long-term projects interrogate the intersections of science fiction, speculative futures, and social reality, re-framing myths and re-imagining the role of rituals in contemporary life. Engaging with the legacies of colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism, Mayer’s practice envisions alternative futures that challenge dominant structures of power. Working at the convergence of mediums and methodologies, she opens new spaces for collective imagination and transformation.

Mayer was awarded the Film London Jarman Award (2014) and the Otto Mauer Prize (2007). She is the recipient of the MAK Schindler Grant for 2024/25. Her work has traveled to venues and biennales including Istanbul Biennale; Ujazdowski, Warsaw; Museion, Bozen; High Line, New York; TANK Shanghai; Salzburger Kunstverein; Hayward Gallery, Southbank, London; ICA, London; SeMA Biennale Mediacity, Seoul; Moderna Museet, Stockholm & Moderna Museet Malmö; ICA, Audain Gallery, Vancouver; Kunstverein Hamburg; ICA, London; Performa 11, New York; SculptureCenter, New York; 21er Haus Belvedere, Vienna; CCA Glasgow; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; 11th Baltic Triennial, CAC, Vilnius; Athens Biennale; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Lentos Museum, Linz; TBA21, Vienna & Cordoba; Kunsthalle, Basel.

Mayer holds an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and Goldsmiths University in London. She is the recipient of the three-year arts-based research project funded by FWF, Mythopoesis for Techno-Living Systems, in partnership with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. MTLS explores the intersections of art, technology, and philosophy through the lens of mythopoesis—the creation of new origin stories for a technologically advanced future. Mayer has lectured and taught at various institutions internationally.