ARTMargins Online

Contemporary art across the evolving global peripheries

Tagged: GDR

A large crowd of young people is gathered in and around two open cars in a small-town car park, talking, laughing and smoking. One boy sits on a car roof in a Dortmund football shirt, and the pair seen in Figure 6 are present in matching Nike trainers.

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Nina Follows ·

Living Together, from Berlin to Bitterfeld: GDR and Small-Town Ambivalence and Hope in the Photography of Ute and Werner Mahler

Since the 1970s, Ute Mahler has chronicled the times and lives that have surrounded her, from the late GDR to today’s Germany. Born Ute Schirmer in Berka, rural Thuringia, on October 29, 1949, just weeks after the foundation of the socialist state, she effectively grew up alongside her native East Germany. Between 1969 and 1974 she trained in photography at Leipzig’s Academy of Visual Arts (HGB, the only photography school in East Germany) under Arno Fischer (1927–2011) and formed a professional and romantic partnership with fellow photographer Werner Mahler (b.1950), whom she married shortly afterwards. She has since worked as … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles / ARTMargins Online: Special Issue

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 by Anna Zett ·

Dispose, discard, discare: Environmental, political and emotional wastelands in the German Democratic Republic

In everyday use, waste refers to a material which is considered dirty, useless, or worthless, and therefore deserves to be dumped, ditched or disappeared. If these words are uncomfortable to read, it’s probably because they are frequently used as a metaphor in the social and political sphere. In English, there are numerous synonyms for trash and our separation from it. We might speak politely of disposal, but the underlying problem remains the same: how to get rid of dirty junk for good? Some crap can be directly composted or recycled, but that applies only to very specific materials in very … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Christopher Williams-Wynn ·

Exploitation, Past and Present: Negotiating the Afterlives of German Reunification

Sung Tieu, 1992, 2025, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, February 15 – May 4, 2025

“…the question arises as to whether all social models of the modern era are not more or less successful attempts to delegate the horrors of exploitation to a majority in the interests of a minority or to various minorities in the name of a majority…”—Heiner Müller, “Das Liebesleben der Hyänen,” 1993*

Over two floors at the KW Institute in Berlin, Sung Tieu’s exhibition 1992, 2025 offers a precise set of reflections on the legacies of German reunification. Her works, from salvaged commodities to archival … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Forum

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 by Constanze Fritzsch, Magdalena Moskalewicz, Jitka Šosová, Gregor Taul ·

Rereading Socialist Realism: Podcast on Comparative Perspectives on Socialist Art

In recent years, US scholarship has succeeded in establishing a new perspective on the art of the ex-GDR that overcomes the dichotomy between so-called “dissident art” on the one hand, and “official art,” on the other. Rather than cementing this dichotomy, scholars of this new trend in art historical research points out and study the interconnections and entanglement between official and non-official art. At the same time, they have developed a discourse that subjects the well-established narrative of Socialist Realism as the Great Other of 20th century art history to a long-overdue reevaluation.  Conferences such as “Was Socialist Realism Global? … Read more

An installation view of a museum with white walls and a glossy gray floor. We are looking into a broad corner of the museum, and in the space we see three-dimensional displays of textile works, some mounted on rectangular frames. The works are brightly colored, with a combination of organic, wavy patterns and (in the work furthest from us) silhouettes that recall rockets or spaceships. There is also a video monitor mounted on the raised floor section closest to us.

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Sara Blaylock ·

Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc 1960s-1980s

Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc 1960s-1980s, at Walker Art Center, November 11, 2023 – March 10, 2024; Phoenix Art Museum, April 17, 2024 – September 15, 2024; and Vancouver Art Gallery, December 14, 2024 – April 21, 2025

Thirty-two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the exhibition Multiple Realities offers a geographically expansive introduction to the creative autonomy that existed behind the Iron Curtain. To the average—which is to say non-specialist—viewer, Multiple Realities provides an intelligible, though not altogether nuanced, view of the Cold War East as a space ruled by ideological inflexibility. Nevertheless, … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Book Reviews

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 by Constanze Fritzsch ·

The Law of the Underground: The Critique of Gender, Performance Art, and the Second Public Sphere in the Late GDR

Angelika Richter, Das Gesetz der Szene. Genderkritik, Performance Art und zweite Öffentlichkeit in der späten DDR [The Law of the Underground: The Critique of Gender, Performance Art, and the Second Public Sphere in the Late GDR] (Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag, 2019), 408 pp.

In 2019, German art historian and curator Angelika Richter published her doctoral thesis The Law of the Underground: The Critique of Gender, Performance Art, and the Second Public Sphere in the Late GDR, in the German language. This book is worth reviewing even three years after its initial publication due to its meticulous research and … Read more