Berlin Art Week has come to an end but the list of exciting exhibitions continues. Held at the renowned art museum Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden is Katharina Sieverding’s major solo exhibition, Watching the Sun at Midnight and Headlines at the museum’s Berlin space, Salon Berlin.
The museum celebrates 60 years of the German artist’s oeuvre, showcasing videos from the late 1960s, her oversized self-portrait series from 1970s to the 1990s as well as her contemporary productions. Curated by Udo Kittelmann in cooperation with Katharina Sieverding, Watching the Sun at Midnight is a display of the artist’s persistent approach of contemporary German and global matters that has ensured the ongoing relevance of her work. On the other hand, Headlines, a thematically focused selection of large-scale photographs referring to the darkest chapter in Germany’s history, the National Socialist era, in the Former Jewish Girls’ School in Auguststrasse in Berlin.
Sieverding, who was a student of Joseph Beuys, has continuously focused her artistic energy on the political issues and have been considered a pioneer of photography, best known for her unconventional visual strategies and media-led creative practice. In her serial photographic works, she gives expression to reflections about identity, the current social, political, and cultural climate, gender discourses, and the necessary emancipation of the female artist.
Over at Salon Berlin, the photographs build on documents from the concentration camps at Dachau and Sachsenhausen, as well as records held at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. Sieverding points to the widely diverse manifestations and expressions of anti-Semitism and exclusion, racism, and violence, outlining the latter’s timelessness and societies’ inability to surmount them as they recur throughout history.
Top: MATON SOLARISATION F-XXI und F-XXII, 1969 Farbfotografie, Acryl, Stahlrahmen Color photograph, acrylic, steel frame, je/each 190 × 125 cm © Katharina Sieverding, VG Bild-Kunst Bonn 2021 Foto: © Klaus Mettig, VG Bild-Kunst Bonn 2021 Bottom: ENCODE XIV, 2006 Farbfotografie, Acryl, Stahlrahmen Color photograph, acrylic, steel frame 275 × 375 cm
“I don’t make propaganda art and I don’t want to be seen as somebody who stands for anything in particular. All these designations merely pin me down. I want to adopt an independent position and express my thoughts through my works.” – Katharina Sieverding
Headlines is on at Salon Berlin until 26th September 2021. Watching the Sun at Midnight continues at Museum Frieder Burda until January 9, 2022.