“ROSA”
The group exhibition ROSA commemorates the 100th anniversary of Rosa Luxemburg’s death and shows that Luxemburg’s hope for a just society is still an urgent topic. Her ideas are more than 100 years old, but in today’s political era of growing social injustice, due to the increase of the capitalist economy, due to the still on-going struggle for gender equality, and due to the spread of xenophobia, more present than ever.
“The virtue of the exhibition lies in the free interpretation of Rosa Luxemburg’s lifework. It profits and lives from the idea of politically engaged art and connects contemporary art and political education” – state the curators Kasia Lorenc and Angelika J. Trojnarski. “Because the connection is not direct – the artists do not refer to her biography, but to her intellectual approach – the exhibition offers all the more opportunities to discuss Luxemburg’s values. It makes the visitor reflect on today’s living and working conditions, democracy and humanity in the spirit of Luxemburg”.
Pauł Sochacki’s humorous painterly excursion into the world of animals uses visual metaphors to question current socio-political conditions. Jens Pecho’s text-based works impugn the conventions of everyday speaking and acting. Ulf Aminde, winner of the City of Cologne’s contest for an NSU memorial in Keupstrasse, presents not only his idea behind this place of encounter, but also its lack of realization. In her latest photo series Becoming Native, Evamaria Schaller, an Austrian living in Cologne, examines her genetic heritage and thus calls into question a narrow concept of origin. With her feminist altarpieces, Magdalena Kita replies to stereotypical gender roles and social power structures. In Anna Witt’s 2- channel video installation, the artist lends her voice to a group of young people in Leipzig to jointly develop a modern manifesto, challenge existing social norms, and finally translate them into performative interventions. The video recordings of a concert by Polish artist Zorka Wollny, based on music and loud work noises, investigate political aspects of noise and rediscover the essence of the human voice within the workplace. Vera Drebusch and Florian Egermann initiate the opening evening with their performance Deutschland, mon amour, which manifests an ambivalent national relationship.
The exhibition takes place under the patronage of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation NRW e.V. and thanks to the financial support of the Kunststiftung NRW.