WHO’S AFRAID OF__ROSA
19.11.2021 - 15.01.2022
Who's afraid of__Rosa is a German-Polish cooperation of 17 female artists from Berlin, Kraków, Leipzig, Wroclaw and Zamość. The exhibition was initiated by a group of artists from the Women Artists Network Leipzig (KNw Leipzig). The selected works can be seen simultaneously at four exhibition venues in Leipzig. They show painting and photography, installation, performance, dance and video.
In its title, the exhibition Who's afraid of __Rosa sparks off a whole spectrum of associations, at the center of which is the Name Rosa / the word Rosa (pink).
In 2019, Rosa is primarily associated with the memory of Rosa Luxemburg, who was murdered in Berlin one hundred years ago (1871-1919). Born in Zamość, Poland, and a political scientist who earned her doctorate in Zurich, she has her place in the history of the twentieth century as a political activist and resistance fighter against militarism, as a co-founder of the Spartacus Group, and co-founder of the German Communist Party (KPD) in 1918. Less well known today may be her poetic talent, her botanical interest, but also her artistic talent practiced at that time. She was one of the few female personalities of her time who not only earned a doctorate, but also strove to actively change social conditions through political involvement. The artists participating in the exhibition thoroughly examined this complex personality of contemporary history. Their focus was a search for possibilities of an approach through visual art. As a theoretician, Rosa Luxemburg formulated thoughts in her critical texts on the economy, nationalism and pacifism, whose relevance seems unbroken from today's perspective of a globalized, economically neoliberal world.
With special regard to Rosa Luxemburg's biography, the initiators of the project in Leipzig decided to invite artists from her country of birth, Poland, as well as artists from Berlin, the place where she was murdered in January 1919. The encounter with Polish women artists has not only initiated the process of a lively international dialogue. It also revealed how different the reception of Rosa Luxemburg is, especially in view of the current political developments in Poland. Rosa (pink) also denotes a color. In an allusion to the title of a painting by the American artist Barnett Newman, Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue, it opens up a wide associative space about the meaning and effect of individual colors – two of Newman's four paintings have been vandalized in museums in Berlin and Amsterdam. Unlike the three primary colors, pink is a mixed color that is strongly coded socially, gender-specifically. Its function can be used boldly, provocatively, but its color coding can be blown apart and questioned in the same breath.
A third aspect of the exhibition title should be mentioned – afraid, fear. It evokes subjective feelings, not only in relation to Rosa Luxemburg and her political stance. The keyword afraid opens up a further realm of artistic questions about the currently observable social polarization in many areas of public life.
Participating artists:
Enby Anakin
Lisa Maria Baier
Melo Börner
Judith Miriam Escherlor
Anna Goebel
Enne Haehnle
Friederike Jokisch
Renata Kaminska
Dorota Karolewska
Nadja Kurz
Roswitha Maul
Maryna Mazur
Maria Rehli
Mara Sandrock
Sophie Stephan
Louise Walleneit
Polymora Inc.
Continuation of WHOS AFRAID OF__ROSA exhibition with performance by Bodytalk:
Supported and funded by: the NATIONAL PERFORMANCE NETZ dance co-production funding; Stiftung Kunstfonds; Bürger Stiftung Dresden; Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung; Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien
