Escape into the Public Sphere

The title of the group exhibition – Escape into the Public Sphere – refers to a strategy used by Gabriele Stötzer and the Erfurt Women Artists’ Group in 1980s East Germany, to resist the dispersion of critically thinking communities by the regime’s secret police. Rather than concealing their work, the artists openly organised, and advertised, exhibitions and performances in the public sphere – thereby exposing the prevalent government repression as much as the art itself. Under the era’s authoritarian regime, alliances between people who shared similar convictions were viewed as a threat – which, in turn, confirmed that communities were more powerful than the sum of their parts. 

The showcase draws correlations between artworks in which the camera served as a tool to promote emancipation and open up new spaces for public dissent. In this context, social interactions and expressions of solidarity were as important as the artistic result, even though they usually took place outside of the frame. 

With a focus on works from the 1970s and 1980s, Escape into the Public Sphere takes us back to a time when photography and film were closely interlinked with actionism – an art form in which the human (or collective) body is shown in a societal context, while breaking with its norms to encourage divergence. On this basis, the exhibition examines political power structures – and situations in which they begin to crumble. 

The featured artists are Gabriele Stötzer & the Erfurt Women Artists’ Group, as well as Ion Grigorescu, Sanja Iveković, Zbigniew Libera, Martha Rosler, Aykan Safoğlu, Jo Spence & Terry Dennett.