Queer Art in the GDR?" - Biographies between Underground and Propaganda

How is it possible to love and live in a state where homosexuality is gradually decriminalized, but social exclusion still exists? What happens when art becomes the place where queer realities can be made visible – subtly, openly, or on a threshold in between?

The exhibition reports on this, featuring paintings, sculptures, ceramics, and photographs by Toni Ebel, Andreas Fux, Harry Hachmeister, Jochen Hass, Dorothea von Philipsborn, Erika Stürmer-Alex, Rita “Tommy” Thomas, Jürgen Wittdorf, and Egon Wrobel. The works of these artists are contemporary witnesses to diverse strategies and experiences: from underground and propaganda, resistance and submission, and visibility and withdrawal.

The term “queer” was not yet a designation for diverse lifestyles in the GDR that we would describe with it today. Nevertheless, there were a large number of people who loved same-sex or moved beyond the cis or binary understanding of gender. For this reason, the exhibition deliberately uses the term “queer” to relate different life worlds to each other.

This exhibition aims to create visibility and invites a closer look. At the art, at the identities behind it, and at the question of how a queer life can be characterized under completely contrasting conditions.