Artists videos

Here you may find selected statements, documentations and video works by artists from the exhibition ›31: Women‹. During the duration of the exhibition, we are continuously updating and expanding this content in order to make our exhibition accessible beyond the physical space rooms. Currently, you can find the following posts:

• Amit Berlowitz – Woods (2011)
• Madeleine Boschan – Statement
• Max Cole – In conversation
• Mary Corse – Interview
• Ulrike Flaig – Statement
• Annu Palakunnathu Matthew – Documentation
• Zanele Muholi – Statement
• Nnenna Okore – Statement
• Charlotte Posenenske – Conversation on the oeuvre
• Bernie Searle – Statement (2019)
• Natalia Stachon – In conversation
• Silke Radenhausen – Documentation
• Adejoke Tugbiyele – Statement
• Amalia Valdés – Statement

Statements

Madeleine Boschan on Body and Space

The Berlin-based artist Madeleine Boschan talks about her sculptural practice.

Rigorously reduced painting: Mary Corse in conversation

In a detailed interview, Mary Corse talks about early influences that were important for her art and explains the significance of light and space for her painting. Corse’s paintings obsessively engage with perception and embody rather than merely represent light, experimenting with the concept of subjective experience in new and innovative ways.

Listen to the space: Ulrike Flaig on Picture in Motion

The work of the artist Ulrike Flaig reflects a parallel rooting in the media of drawing, installation, performance and experimental music. Her spatial installation Picture in Motion, 2017, translates an abstract pictorial configuration into three-dimensional painting and sound. In the video, the artist gives insight into her handling of compositional principles, music, translation processes and spatial experience.

Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness

Photographer and activist Zanele Muholi is today one of the most recognized contemporary artists and a leading advocate of the global LGBTQI+ community.

Muholi’s artistic practice of portrait and self-portrait photography combines political activism and photographic image production. In 2002 Muholi founded the ‘Forum for the Empowerment of Women,’ and defines the own artistic practice as visual activism: “I embarked on a journey of visual activism to ensure that there is black lesbian and trans visibility, to showcase our existence and resistance in this democratic society, to present a positive imagery of black lesbians.” (Z.M.)

Nnenna Okore on Cycles and Cyclones

The Nigerian-Australian artist Nnenna Okore provides some insights into the meaning, the relationships to nature and philosophy, as well as the formation of her wall sculpture Cycles and Cyclones (2017).

»My works relate to nature and Igbo words. I deal with the phenomena of life: the essence, the riddle, the fluidity. The floral is a powerful visual example of a fleeting experience. It stands for change and growth, for decay and death, for the cosmological definition of life. I grew up with the philosophies of reincarnation and they are inherent in my work. “(N.O.)

Berni Searle on Performance and Identity

In the individual search for what can be identity beyond categorical attributions, the South African artist Berni Searle’s own body provides the de facto moment to invent herself: “Problems arise from the fact that in many cases my identity has been made for me” (B. S., 2001).

Moments of transition: In conversation with Natalia Stachon

The work of the artist Natalia Stachon (*1976 Kattowitz, PL) transforms and condenses aesthetic elements of public space in installations. In an interview with Nadine Isabelle Henrich, she talks about the role of photography and literature in her artistic process, her interest in industrial materials, the interactions between art and society, and the new control infrastructures in times of a global pandemic.

Adejoke Tugbiyele on Musician II

The American-Nigerian artist Adejoke Tugbiyele shares with us a genuine insight into her artistic practice, vision and particularly her sculpture Musician II (2014). Her sculptural objects evoke a transitive presence through humanoid-abstract silhouettes and often colorful every-day materials such as wickerwork or wire mesh. Hybrid forms and physical actions raise questions of identity and acceptance and negotiate relationships between historical and contemporary conceptions of gender, sexuality, and society.

Watch the video here.

Looking into the artist’s studio: Amalia Valdés

The video of the Chilean artist Amalia Valdés (*1981) offers an insight into her practice. She understands art as a meditative process and combines craft traditions with new technologies. Her paintings refer to abstract forms from traditions of decorative and sacred geometry and combine these with structures and patterns from nature.

Video works

Woods (2011) by Amit Berlowitz

The video work Woods (2011) by Israeli artist Amit Berlowitz shows a young couple walking through a forest at night – as most of her work it creates an open, poetic narrative stream of unanswered questions about human relations. Her work traces the figures in an open landscape – her films play with both beauty and a feeling of the uncanny.

Documentations

Minimalism, Lines and Horizons: In conversation with Max Cole

American painter Max Cole (*1937 in Kansas) uses linear principles to tackle “the essential of painting” in her minimal works. By hand she places intricate vertikal lines densely in a space between painted „horizons.“ These lines can be read as units of time.

A life between cultures: Annu Palakunnathu Matthew

The Indian-British artist Annu Palakunnathu Matthew analyzes the erosion of national and cultural identities in conceptual photographic projects. Matthew’s photo-based artwork is a artistic blend of still and moving imagery. Her larger work draws on archival photographs as a source of inspiration to examine concepts of memory and to re-examine dominant historical narratives.

Watch the video here (in English).

Renate Wiehager and Paul Maenz in conversation about Charlotte Posenenske

The art historian Renate Wiehager, director of the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection, and Paul Maenz, a former companion of the artist and after 1970 one of the leading gallery owners of the time, will provide an insight into the work of Charlotte Posenenske (1930 – 1985, D), who was one of the pioneering German artists of the 1960s. After an early work as a painter, she quickly developed from painting and minimal sculpture to performative works in public space.

Silke Radenhausen: Geometry – Material – Feminism

An insight into the artistic practice of the Kiel-based artist Silke Radenhausen is provided by the short film “Irgendwo dazwischen” (in German).