Michaela Moscouw attended an arts and crafts school[3] and trained at Höhere Graphische Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt from 1976 to 1981.
[5][6][7] Maria Venzl, curator of the comprehensive exhibition “Present Absent” 2023 in Linz, divides Moscouw's artistic development into four distinct phases.
Moscouw then turned to the camera and her early photographic work, in which she staged her own body in interior shots inspired by Viennese Actionism.
[5] Photo historian Carl Aigner locates Michaela Moscouw as a late (1980s) but typical representative of the Austrian movement of Auteur Photography.
[11] In her photography, Moscouw resists “conventional definitions and expectations”, she uses unusual methods of image production such as “faulty, inexpensive, easily available material and cheap equipment”; she distances herself from the 'perfect form', instead of producing and archiving 'valuable' works of art, she prefers to reuse and rework Arte Povera materials and older photographic works: 'garbage pictures' have the same right to exist as 'good pictures', the artist is quoted as saying.