K20

The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is honoring the work of the internationally renowned Düsseldorf-based photographer Katharina Sieverding (b. 1941 in Prague) with a major survey exhibition. The multiple award-winning artist became famous for her iconic close-ups of her own face and her large-format photographs, which she was one of the first to introduce to the art world in the mid-1970s.

With a strong background in theater studies, she records, dissects, and diagnoses historical and contemporary issues and social wounds, making gender boundaries fluid and questioning the power and abuse of images. Her monumental works, which can be categorized as performance, body art, and experimental film, have added a new dimension to photography. To this day, Katharina Sieverding’s work takes a political stance: on National Socialism and the question of German identity against the backdrop of anti-democratic forces, but also on global issues. Her works deal with the causes and consequences of wars and their complex constellations of power and violence, as well as with mankind’s destructive exploitation of planet Earth. Even when her works refer directly to current events, they seem timelessly contemporary.

At K21, in addition to key works from the artist’s nearly sixty-year career, her extensive archive will also be included in the exhibition for the first time as an open space for discourse.

Curated by Isabelle Malz