Drawings
The wall drawing that emerged from the research consists of 260 individual drawings, whose motifs are inspired by photographs and samizdat materials from this collection.
The drawings are not direct translations of the source material, but rather fragments — details that caught my attention and stayed with me: a plant from a backyard in Berlin, for example, carries the memory of a secret meeting held there; another refers to a fashion show by the Erfurter Künstlerinnengruppe. An abstract pattern from a church covering holds traces of the Women’s Forum (Frauenforum), and within it of feminist and gender-conscious working groups and theologies in the GDR.
Hands become carriers of solidarity among Women for Peace, of the collective struggle of the group Lesbians in the Church (Lesben in der Kirche) for the commemoration of homosexual victims of National Socialism, or of dancing at the 3rd Dresden Women’s Festival (Dresdener Frauenfest) in 1987, which contributed to the founding of women’s shelters in the GDR.
The drawings remain deliberately abstract and fragmentary, also as a way of pointing to the conditions of a women’s movement whose actions and meetings were often prepared in secrecy, and whose language frequently had to remain coded — not least because of the presence of undercover informants of the GDR state security.
The decision to work with 260 individual drawings is equally conceptual. It refers to archival practice itself, and to the countless sheets of documents from which they emerge.
Through the use of Polychromos pencils, traces of hands and fingers appear on and beside the motifs: a reminder of the night-time printing sessions of flyers and samizdat materials on mimeograph machines, which churches made available to the women only at some risk. The women would leave with ink-stained fingers, often leaving their own marks on the prints themselves.
images:
Polychromos pencil on paper (to be transferred onto concrete),
each 42 × 29,7 cm
Excerpt of 262 drawings.
