Who enters the since 2005, reconstructed Kunsthalle in Lipsiusbaus between Frauenkirche Church and Bruhl terrace, is immediately impressed by the contrast between the lush decoration and exposed brick walls. Under the glass dome, a macramé hanging-like yarn knotting up in the circular Opening at the basement level, while a coarse rope with node blocked the direct access to the cashier area.

Both installations of Lacing add a subtle and resistant manner, in the natural Color of the architecture. They come from Christa Jeitner. With their works of textile materials, the Berliner occurs as one of the 36 radical artists Collective behind the Iron curtain, the notice here under the title of “Medea” a strong appearance. How overdue this assessment, the current exhibition in the adjacent Albertinum. In the private collections of art in the GDR, they hardly female positions.

The mythological (Anti-)heroine, Medea has been discovered by the curator Susanne Altmann in addition to Cassandra and Penthesilea as the identification characters of Eastern European artists inside. The rebellious female figures of the ancient world serve not only as a sophisticated camouflage, to the discomfort of the social and political conditions, to Express. They also appear in the contemporary guise of Punk and Performance, fashion and painting, photography and Film. The so-called Pre-Medeischen drawings “Form-Inform” by Geta Bratescu from the year 1975, as well as Karla Woisnitzas drawing cycle to the myth of Medea from 1985 to demonstrate the curatorial statement impressive.

Self-nature, offered only a certain amount of free space

The exhibition unfolds in the chapters to myth, painting, photography, Intermedia, Textiles, fashion, body work, Seriality, small size and free space. She asks about the specific conditions under which Eastern European artists have produced: What are the design motifs and media strategies, and open spaces within the authoritarian regimes of Eastern Europe before 1989? For many artists the body was the only retreat for a self-determined expression. Self-presentation, Performance and dance were used since the ‘ 70s, the criticism of socialist as social role models.

Even the free nature is offered to only a certain free space in which East German artists such as Gabriele Stötzer, Cornelia Schleime their performative body productions to be able to realize. Unlike the Western counterparts of the country-kind of temporary landscape projects for Magdalena Jetelovà and Zorka Ságlová in the CSSR or Ana Lupas in Romania, were always associated with personal risk and external resistance.

So how Christa Jeitner always against the grain, sewn, tied, and ironed, the often female connoted materiality and Craftsmanship of the Textile is by no means dull and homely, but dresses like a blood-red thread of pain, Aggression, and discomfort through the exhibition. Like a flaying animal or fetish Magdalena Abakanowiczs textile sculpture “Abakan brown IV” (1969-84) hangs from the ceiling. The countless seams as scars on the seven “identity shirts” (1970-1980) of Ana Lupas, so that a kind of series of portraits of disabled identities. Relief-like substance pictures of Adriena Šimotová represent the “cry” (1974) and the “Near distance” (1978) of a pair in pale colours of silent grief.

radical self-empowerment, but also quieter tones

But the Textile is not charged with grief and sorrow. It also serves the individual’s self-expression in fashion, for there was in the Eastern bloc, neither a big deal nor a big tolerance. Hippie and punk culture were under General suspicion, while the group of Artists of Erfurt, and the Berlin-based fashion and performance group put all sorts of rough with their imaginative creations to the military. A Punk cap with metal nails finds himself in a photography by Sibylle Bergemann. Your shots of the Allerleirauh-collection have become icons of a maladjusted, self-determined femininity. No less iconic is the photo of “Crane operator, Leipzig” stands for the series of workers in German companies, the Evelyn has made judges to the master photographer of East German reality. In the dialogue with their shots, the portraits of Polish farmers, the Rydet Zofia “In the course of time” between 1963 and 1977, photographed. Among the great photographer Gundula Schulze Eldowy with your “Tamarlan”series (1979-87) and finally, a poignant documentation of misery and Would be created in the age. Their famous recording of an old woman, who fights furiously with the Right hand sweeping against an attacker who might notice the cover girl for “Medea”.

in addition to the radical forms of self-empowerment in the Department of “Intermedia” quite quieter sounds are struck. In the beautiful vaulted niches of the basement from the Lipsiusbau, the film works perfectly staged. If the for many years, living in Berlin, a Polish woman, Ewa Partum leaves your cut-out letters and the stack of Sheets by the Wind, so that’s another Form of Rebellion. Your title is: “Active poetry. Poems by Ewa“ (1971-73). And if Geta Bratescu in “Les Mains” (1977) puts your hands in a scene,, so it is a unbegrenzbare creativity – even under unfree conditions – believe.

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conceptual artist Geta Brătescu, The Light in the Heavy

Angela Hohmann

Kunsthalle in the Lipsiusbau, Dresden, Germany, to 31. 3.; The catalogue follows.