The spatial installation "The Virgin, the Cleaver and the Martyr" consists of a six-channel sound piece and various smaller material-based objects like textiles and window pieces. It is devoted to the writings and biography of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim. Born between 912 and 935 during the Ottonian dynasty she lived as a canoness in the monastery of Gandersheim in what is now Lower Saxony in Germany. The artistic work focuses on one of her dramatexts called “Dulcitius – The Martyrdom of the Holy Virgins Agape, Chionia, and Hirena”. There the story of three young women is told, who hold up their heads against their emperor and eventually die as martyrs. The sound piece retells the key-scene of the play–taking place in a kitchen at night – and partakes in its most absurd moment hovering between horror, violence and the grotesque, the fringes of symbolism, various ways of gazing and questions of showing and not-showing.
Written by Hrotsvit of Gandersheim & Tatjana Stürmer
Composition by Lukas Rehm
Vocalised by Anette Wanner, Stine Marie Fischer, Clare Michelle Tunney
Photographs by Alexandra Ivanciu
Commissioned by GfZK Leipzig, "Looking For a New Foundation", curated by Franciska Zolyóm and Hanar Hupka.
Language: English, 13:12 min.
"The Virgin, the Cleaver and the Martyr", GfZK Leipzig (2023)
"The Virgin, the Cleaver and the Martyr", GfZK Leipzig (2023)
"The Virgin, the Cleaver and the Martyr", GfZK Leipzig (2023)
"The Virgin, the Cleaver and the Martyr", GfZK Leipzig (2023)
"The Virgin, the Cleaver and the Martyr", GfZK Leipzig (2023)
"The Virgin, the Cleaver and the Martyr," spatial installation, GfZK Leipzig (11.03.2023–20.08.2023): six-channel sound piece with various textiles and window pieces. Devoted to the writings and biography of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, it re-tells a scene of on of her plays. Taking place in a kitchen at night we partake in its most absurd moment hovering between horror, violence and the grotesque.
We float, dangling between the sky and the earth, suspended between floor and canopy. Our dully sad eyes which always see things different to the ways they are, are showing their stringy lobes to the world, our mutilated hooks reveal our mothers’ madness, reveal our mothers' sadness. (Kathy Acker, in "The Diaries of Laure the Schoolgirl")
Creation of the scenography for the exhibition "Looking For a New Foundation" at GfZK Leipzig with Alexis Blake, Cihan Çakmak, Vajiko Chachkhiani, Pennie Key, Tatjana Stürmer and Leyla Yenirce.
Scenography together with Diane Hillebrand.
The human body remembers and tells stories, adapts and resists in various ways. In interaction with others, it constantly changes and (re)forms itself. However, people are constrained far too often by societal expectations that conflict with their self-image, needs and desires. The exhibition, accompanying events and co-operations focus on the search for new, resistant interpretations of the body and the agency that arises from self-determined attitudes, statements and gestures. Each artistic position is accompanied by a Textkörper-object carrying individual quotes by the artists in their surfaces. Their necks, they bend and move. Their relief-surface speaks to the tactile desires of our hands. Teardrop shaped weights press down on the fabrics and distort the text as a result. They are remnants on how deficient language can be sometimes.
Curated by Hanar Hupka and Franciska Zólyom, in cooperation with Julia Gerke. Silkscreenprint on textiles with Monochrome Leipzig.
Scenography for "Looking For A New Foudation", GfZK Leipzig (2023)
Scenography for "Looking For A New Foudation", GfZK Leipzig (2023)
Scenography for "Looking For A New Foudation", GfZK Leipzig (2023)
Scenography for "Looking For A New Foudation", GfZK Leipzig (2023)
Scenography for "Looking For A New Foudation", GfZK Leipzig (2023)
Creation of the scenography for the exhibition "Looking For a New Foundation" at GfZK Leipzig. Textkörper and tablecloth in collaboration with Diane Hillebrand.
Graphic identity
"333", artist book for Lukas Rehm (2022)
"333", artist book for Lukas Rehm (2022)
"333", artist book for Lukas Rehm (2022)
"333", artist book for Lukas Rehm (2022)