Sanja Iveković (born 1949 in Zagreb), Ulrike Rosenbach (born 1943 in Bad Salzdetfurth) and Gabriele Stötzer (born 1953 in Emleben) have taken radical artistic positions since the 1970s. Independently of each other, in the very different political contexts of their countries of origin, they developed a visual language that criticized common gender roles and the associated cultural norms.
The focus of their work is always the woman: for Rosenbach and Stötzer, the female body functions as a means of expression. They use it as a canvas or to break out of their boundaries through movement. Through her works, Iveković condemns the objectification of women’s bodies and the associated projection surface for gender attributions.
The artists use a wide variety of media such as performance, photography, textiles, writing, painting and film to denounce gender assignments and counteract common images with their owns: sometimes loudly in large-scale actions, sometimes quietly in intimate moments, but always with a clear message.
Based on their own biographies, they create works in which they address the relationship between history and the present against the background of their female identity. To do this, they sometimes resort to rigorous artistic methods and demonstrate new possibilities of expression that have become groundbreaking for many areas of contemporary political art. The exhibition presents photographs, video works, performances and installations from the beginning of the work of Ulrike Rosenbach, Gabriele Stötzer and Sanja Iveković as well as more recent works.
Sanja Ivekovic, Ulrike Rosenbach, Gabriele Stotzer: Outrageously Rebellious
Kunstmuseum Magdeburg
Magdeburg, Germany
