By Lennart Stock, dpa I Saturday, May 6, 2023
EMDEN, Germany – Under the self-confident title “HERE I AM!” an art gallery in north-western Germany is showing self-portraits by 30 female artists from the 20th and 21st centuries from Saturday until the beginning of September.
Works by Katharina Sieverding, Maria Lassnig, Käthe Kollwitz, Hanna Nagel and Marina Abramović, among others, are on display at the Kunsthalle in the port city of Emden in Lower Saxony.
These are expressive self-portraits by female artists that also provide a glimpse into the history of female emancipation.
The personal pictures show how the artists themselves want to be seen, said Lisa Felicitas Mattheis, academic director and chairwoman of the Kunsthalle. The portraits also provide information about the role of women in their respective times, she added.
The show offers a look at the strategies women artists used to claim their place in art – for example, in the mirror of male representations.
Among the more than 80 works on display is a further development of the motif “Art is a Criminal Action” by Ulrike Rosenbach, with which she takes up Andy Warhol’s well-known motif “Double Elvis.” While in Warhol’s original two Elvis Presleys face the viewer with a revolver, Rosenbach has mounted herself in the same pose next to Elvis in her adaptation from the 1970s.
“We see many portraits that are delicate and restrained. But we also see many in which there is incredible chutzpah,” Mattheis said. The self-portraits are about status, roles, self-assertion and wishful thinking.
The show takes up different perspectives of female self-portrayal. Among other things, it is about masquerades, motherhood, questions of identity and growing older.
The idea for the exhibition arose from the motivation to work with and from the collection of the Kunsthalle donors Henri and Eske Nannen as well as the Otto van de Loos donation, said Mattheis.
In past exhibitions, for example for “Mythos Wald” and “Nolde/Rohlfs,” the curators were able to draw on numerous works from the collection, but with “HERE I AM!” it is different: Part of working with the collection is to show what is not there, said the director – and there is a clear imbalance in the gender ratio as only about 10% of the works in the collection were created by women artists. That is why the show now features many loans.
Although self-portraits have a long history and women have always shaped art history as muses and models, they were denied the role of artists themselves for a long time. It was not until the 20th century that women artists were admitted to art academies, said Mattheis. Until then, artistic training was usually reserved for the daughters of wealthy families.
Nowadays, there are more and more exhibitions that focus on the work of women artists, said Mattheis. The Kunsthalle is also planning further shows with female dimensions.
“HERE I AM!” can be seen in the Lower Saxon port city until September 3.
