With this solo exhibition, the Neue Nationalgalerie is honouring, for the first time in Berlin, the complete body of work by Katharina Sieverding, spanning almost six decades. She is regarded as a pioneer of photography and media art and has enjoyed international renown since the 1970s.
Image gallery
Katharina Sieverding, Die Sonne um Mitternacht schauen III/196 26 A/B, Detail, 1973, Farbfotografie, Acryl, Stahlrahmen
Katharina Sieverding, XIX/1980 Norad II, Detail, 1980, Farbfotografie, Acryl, Stahlrahmen
Katharina Sieverding, Stauffenberg-Block I-XVI, 1969/96, Farbfotografie, Acryl, Stahlrahmen, Installationsansicht: Katharina Sieverding 1967-1997, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Düsseldorf 1997-98
Katharina Sieverding, STEIGBILD X, Detail, 1997, Farbfotografie, Acryl, Stahlrahmen
Katharina Sieverding, Porträt
Katharina Sieverding, Grossfoto XI/1978, Schlachtfeld Deutschland, 1978, Farbfotografie, Acryl, Stahlrahmen
Born in Prague in 1941, the artist lives in Düsseldorf but also has close ties to the city of Berlin. Here, from 1992 to 2010, she was a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), where she founded the ‘Visual Culture Studies’ programme.
The Neue Nationalgalerie is an ideal venue for Katharina Sieverding’s politically oriented work, which engages directly with society. From the open glass hall, her monumental image montages can have an impact on the urban space.
The exhibition focuses on works that engage with specifically German history, raise questions of identity or refer to global political contexts.
Sieverding’s artistic practice is based on the close interplay of space, image and text. This connection can be traced back to her early days in theatre, in the field of set design, where she experimented with the idea of a Gesamtkunstwerk.
From 1967 to 1972, she studied under Joseph Beuys at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Art. During these years, her conviction that art can have a social and political impact became firmly established. Since then, Katharina Sieverding has expanded photography to include elements of performance, body art, experimental film and painting, developing it into an interdisciplinary, multimedia practice. Together with the artist Klaus Mettig, she has been developing characteristic techniques since the early 1970s, such as multiple exposure, solarisation, superimposition, strong colour contrasts and image-text montages. Her unmistakable visual language is accompanied by thematic complexity, transformations and openness to interpretation.
Drawing on around 40 large-format works, the exhibition traces the key phases in Sieverding’s oeuvre.
Drawing on historical forms of presentation, some of the works are displayed unframed in monumental scale. Whilst her powerful self-portraits challenge conventional gender roles, series such as ‘Norad’, ‘Kontinentalkern’ and the ‘Steigbilder’ explore existential themes such as illness and healing, death and transformation, as well as the nuclear threat. The cosmic film projection ‘Die Sonne um Mitternacht schauen’ (Watching the Sun at Midnight), created since 2010, focuses on the relationship between humans, energy and planetary processes.
In Sieverding’s artistic statements, socio-political themes are interwoven with a critique of media imagery. Fact and fiction, masking and unmasking, the individual and the masses merge into one another.
As if on an open stage, the politically relevant works are presented in the Glass Hall with a connection to the outdoor space and thus to society. In this way, the current urgency of Sieverding’s art becomes immediately tangible.
The exhibition offers a panorama of world history from 1970 to the present day, one that gives pause for thought and encourages self-reflection.
Curatorial team
- Curated by Uta Caspary and Joachim Jäger
- Assistant Curator: Ricarda Bergmann
A special exhibition by the Nationalgalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Additional information
Opening hours:
- Tuesday – Sunday: 10.00 – 18.00
- Thursday: 10.00 am – 8.00 pm
