To Be Seen

TO BE SEEN. queer lives 19OO–195O

Oct. 7, 2022 until May 21, 2023

Opening on Oct. 6, 2022 at 5 p.m.
with opening remarks by Mirjam Madoff, Claudia Roth, Katrin Habenschaden, Anton Biebl and Philipp Gufler 

TO BE SEEN is an exhibition devoted to the stories of LGBTQI+ in Germany in the first half of the twentieth century. Through historical testimony and artistic positions from then and now, it traces queer lives and networks, the areas of freedom enjoyed by LGBTQI+, and the persecution they suffered.

The exhibition takes an intimate look at a variety of genders, bodies, and identities. It shows how queer life became ever more visible during the 1920s, giving rise to a more open treatment of role models and of desire. During this period, homosexual, trans, and non-binary people achieved their first successes in their fight for equal rights and social acceptance. They organized, fought for scientific and legal recognition of their gender identity, and carved out their own spaces.

But as recognition and visibility in art and culture, science, politics, and society increased, so did resistance. After the Nazis came to power, the LGBTQI+ subculture was largely destroyed. After 1945, their stories and fates were scarcely archived or remembered. 

Artists: Katharina Aigner, Maximiliane Baumgartner, Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Claude Cahun, Zackary Drucker & Marval Rex, El Palomar, Nicholas Grafia, Philipp Gufler, Richard Grune, Lena Rosa Händle, Hannah Höch, Paul Hoecker, Nina Jirsíková, Germaine Krull, Elisar von Kupffer, Zoltán Lesi & Ricardo Portilho, Herbert List, Heinz Loew, Jeanne Mammen, Michaela Melián, Henrik Olesen, Emil Orlik, Max Peiffer Watenphul, Jonathan Penca, Lil Picard, Karol Radziszewski, Alexander Sacharoff, Gertrude Sandmann, Christian Schad, Renée Sintenis, Mikołaj Sobczak, Wolfgang Tillmans and others.

Munich Documentations Center for the History of National Socialism
Max-Mannheimer-Platz 1  | 80333 Munich
Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 7pm

NS-Dokumentationszentrum München/Foto: Connolly Weber Photography

Queering the Narrative

Opening: July 02, 2022, 6 p.m. - 2 p.m.

Duration: July 03 - August 21, 2022

NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein is pleased to present the group exhibition Queering the Narrative. The exhibition brings together for the first time at the Kunstverein 19 national and international artists, all of whom consider themselves to belong to the LGBTQIA* spectrum. 

Against the backdrop of prevailing heteronormative and reactionary manifestations of identity and their artistic representation, the group exhibition raises the question of queer identity and narratives and their influence on the artistic work of the participants.

With Queering the Narrative, the Kunstverein deliberately and exclusively offers space for diverse, queer positions in contemporary art. The public representation of queer issues in all media, including art, continues to draw social criticism today. This varies in intensity, based on the social and political systems as well as the geographically conditioned history in which queer concepts are negotiated, but never seems to be completely silenced, although the acceptance of queer content in the shelter of a museum or exhibition institution is growing. There, art not only succeeds in questioning  heteronormative values and codes, but also shows other points of view and perspectives, while creating identification potential for queer people. With the intention of increasingly inscribing queer images in the collective pictorial memory, ideally the fight for LGBTQIA* rights is also strengthened and a normalization of queer lifestyles is pushed forward.

The selected works in the exhibition at the NAK come from various genres, so painting meets graphics, photography, installation, sculpture or video. The works sometimes reveal interdisciplinary interfaces, but are also interconnected in terms of content and aesthetics in the exhibition context, thus forming a complex web of codes and narratives. The subjects of the works are particularly diverse, both private and political in nature, partly representational, partly abstract, but always committed to the question of queer identity, to the writing of (one's own) queer history.

Following the idea of Queering the Narrative, the Kunstverein would like to push the institutional discourse on queer contents and positions in the field of exhibitions and question the politics of power and visibility, especially in the art world. Queer identity and queer art are to be understood as a pluralistic, changeable concept, which in its manifold and positively occupied manifestations is placed complementarily alongside a heteronormative society.

Queerness as a gift, you're welcome. Going beyond the artistic productions of the exhibition, performances, lectures and workshops will evoke alternative, as queer, spaces of action in order to foreground performative and transgressive conceptions of LGBTQIA* identity. The corresponding program accompanying the exhibition can be found promptly on the NAK homepage and will be announced on social media.

NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein
Passstraße 29
52070 Aachen

NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein / Fotos: Simon Vogel 

Queer?! Visual Art in Europe

Projektion auf die Krise (Gauweilereien in München) is included in the book »QUEER!? Visual arts in Europe« by Anton Anthonissen and Evert van Straaten, Waanders Uitgevers, Zwolle.

QUEER ARCHIVES INSTITUTE

Künstlergespräch mit Karol Radziszewski, Gründer des QAI und Herausgeber des DIK Fagazine