herzwärts wild

(East)german and Polish female artists from the 1980s and 1990s

 

19/07—27/09/26

 

Tina Bara, Johanna Bartl, Annemirl Bauer, Bärbel Bohley, Halina Chrostowska, E.R.N.A., Krystyna Garstka-Saran, Kerstin Grimm, Izabella Gustowska, Angela Hampel,  Ingrid Hartmetz, Sabine Herrmann, Eva Mahn, Bożena Markowicz, Monika Maria Nowak, Helga Paris, Krystyna Piotrowska, Christine Prinz, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, Karin Sakrowski, Christine Schlegel, Cornelia Schleime, Gundula Schulze Eldowy, Maria Sewcz, Barbara Anna Sobańska, Heike Stephan, Gabriele Stötzer, Erika Stürmer-Alex, Gudrun Trendafilov, Karla Woisnitza, Doris Ziegler

 

The exhibition brings together around 80 works from the BLMK collection and a private loan in a German-Polish dialogue. Paintings, drawings, photographs, graphic works, assemblages, and sculptures by female artists socialized in the GDR and the Polish People’s Republic engage with one another. Born between 1929 and 1962, these artists represent several generations whose work emerged under comparable social conditions yet evolved within distinct political, cultural, and biographical contexts.

 

Direct exchange between the art scenes of both countries was minimal—particularly following the closure of the border between the Polish People’s Republic and the GDR in 1981. Nevertheless, many of these artists shared the experience of state regulation, social upheaval, and the tension between propagated equality and patriarchal structures. Their works do not articulate a shared manifesto; instead, they develop distinctive visual languages and artistic strategies to address issues of authorship, visibility, and self-representation.

 

A key focus of the exhibition is the visual politics of the body and gender. The artists draw upon traditional iconographies—shifting or subverting them—to devise new forms of female subjectivity. The body (often their own) serves both as a surface for projecting societal attributions and as a site of artistic self-empowerment. Mythological figures, individual sign systems, and the exploration of the (fragmented) gaze—directed both at the self and at surrounding circumstances—reflect an attempt to develop unique visual languages beyond normative concepts of femininity. At the same time, the exhibition highlights differing social influences: for instance, the depiction of nudity in predominantly Catholic Poland was associated with different taboos than in the GDR.

 

A second focus turns to the pivotal shifts of 1989/90. The works on display address experiences of control and loss, new beginnings and disorientation, as well as the material and psychological traces left by political systems. The systemic transition appears as an ambivalent process, with ruptures and continuities that extend into the present.

A transnational perspective on the art of this era of upheaval reveals how female artists not only documented societal changes but also critically reflected upon and helped shape them through their visual worlds.