Xenia Hausner (born in Vienna, Austria in 1951) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Until the early 1990ies she was a set designer at Covent Garden, London, the Burgtheater in Vienna, Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, the Salzburg Festivals and many other.
As of 1990 Xenia Hausner began concentrating on painting. People are at the center of her focus. Her images are enigmatic, the situations she depicts ambiguous. Xenia Hausner's large-formatted works are societal descriptions, the situations purposely fragmentary are snapshots from daily life. In contrast to the classical portrait, the characters in her images are cast like actors in a play. Her style is expressive and her palette brims over with strong colors, a fact that is apparent in the flesh tones of her protagonists. Xenia Hausner works on paper and mixed-media as well. She transforms large-formatted photos into paintings, incorporating various materials depending on the specific medium she is working in. In this way, painting and photography merge, are transported to the limits of current artistic awareness.
While preparing for her exhibition "Damage" at the Shanghai Art Museum in 2011, she became intensively interested in Asiatic, especially Chinese motifs and began incorporating them into her personal artistic DNA: clear evidence of the global networking in contemporary art.
Her works has been exhibited internationally in numerous galleries and museums so in Berlin, Vienna, Venice, New York, St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong und Sydney.
Her paintings are represented in the collections such as: Shanghai Art Museum; Today Art Museum Beijing; Hong Kong Arts Centre; Albertina Vienna; Batliner Art Foundation, Vienna; Belvedere Museum Vienna; First Art Foundation, Vaduz; Museum Würth Künzelsau and Würth Collection Oslo; European Central Bank, Frankfurt; George Economou Collection, Athen; Forum Gallery, New York; Seven Bridges Foundation Greenwich/USA; Steven Bennett Collection, San Antonio/USA; Paul Allen Family Collection USA; Serendipity Arts Trust, New Delhi, India.