5 QUESTIONS FOR SEBASTAN BADEN
Starting July 6, the SCHIRN will be hosting an exhibition focusing on concept artist and pioneer of critical feminism Martha Rosler. Director Sebastian Baden reveals what it is about her art that fascinates him and just why her work should be shown now, of all times.
By SCHIRN MAGAZINE3. And what motivated you to decide to show Rosler’s work at the SCHIRN now in particular?
Martha Rosler has been observing the relationship between art and our society for more than 60 years now. From her starting point in the USA, she focuses on circumstances relating to global politics. With her clear, analytical eye, her simultaneously poetic and deconstructive approach, Rosler processes social issues that have been and still are decidedly topical – and it is this that, for me, makes her so relevant in our war-torn present that is so shaken by crises. For the SCHIRN, Martha Rosler, my co-curator Luise Leyer, and I have selected works that call to mind the military conflicts of the 20th century, the consequences of which are still being felt to this day. However, Martha also looks at those stereotypical role models of women in our society and at the changes in our urban environments that are impacting the retail industry and the social structure of entire districts. To illustrate this, Rosler has captured the changes to her surroundings in Greenpoint New York in series of photographic images. A phenomenon that is equally rife Frankfurt.
4. Can you provide us with a foretaste of the exhibition – what kind of subjects and works can we expect?
In the exhibition, Luise Leyer and I provide a dense overview of Rosler’s oeuvre as of the 1960s – in different media such as photomontage, videos, photography, texts, and installations. Central to this selection of her works are three iconic series of her socio-critical photomontages, in the shape of “House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home” on the Vietnam War and “Body Beautiful, or Beauty Knows No Pain”, plus her influential work “The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems”. Taking this as its starting point, the concentrated tour centers on three topics – the iconography of war, the importance of the patriarchal perspective in the constitution of gender, and Rosler’s observation of social and economic change in her surroundings.
5. Finally, is there any work that you would particularly like to recommend to our visitors – for instance, is there a piece that has firmly lodged in your mind?
I am moved by the latest addition to the series “House Beautiful”, which Rosler produced as a reaction to the US military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2003 and 2008. However, I believe something at least equally relevant in this context is the major installation “Theater of Drones” dating from 2013, in which Rosler explored the development and use of drones for surveillance purposes and for conducting war. We are showing this work in the public space of the SCHIRN Rotunde – against the backdrop of current wars such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it is once again exceptionally poignant.