Dreaming: Annemirl Bauer and Bärbel Bohley

As part of the six-part exhibition series “Making Public: On the Work and Legacy of the Centre for Art Exhibitions of the GDR” by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa), the final exhibition in the series brings together two exceptional female artists and political activists: Annemirl Bauer and Bärbel Bohley. Both openly challenged the repressive GDR system and, as a result, came into conflict with the state and its institutions. There are no works by Annemirl Bauer in the ZfK’s collection; Bärbel Bohley is represented by three prints.

During their lifetimes, neither artist had an exhibition at the Galerie im Turm, which from 1965 onwards served as the prominent exhibition space of the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR (VBK). The exhibition Dreaming aims to fill this gap in the very place that deliberately excluded these two significant artists, drawing on their estates to do so.

Annemirl Bauer (1939–1989) emerged early on as a critical voice against the dogmatic art system of the GDR. Her paintings combine figurative realism with expressive immediacy. As a single mother, she lived in precarious circumstances, was monitored by the Stasi, and, following her demand for universal freedom of travel in 1984, was banned from practising her profession by the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR (VBK); this ban was lifted two years later following pressure from fellow artists. Through numerous letters, Bauer attempted to prevent Bärbel Bohley’s expulsion from the VBK’s Painting/Graphic Art section in the spring of 1983. Her portraits of Bohley also bear witness to the mutual support between the two women.

Active in various political movements, including Women for Peace, Bärbel Bohley (1945–2010) was already facing repression in the early 1980s, which was also reflected in her artistic work. In her drawings, prints and paintings, she focuses on the individual, on personal experience and autonomy. This focus on individual lived realities also shaped her social activism. In 1989, as the political situation in the GDR came to a head, the focus of her work shifted from art to politics. As a co-founder of the Neues Forum, she became a defining figure of the Peaceful Revolution.

The exhibition Dreaming: Annemirl Bauer and Bärbel Bohley takes the Galerie im Turm, as a historic venue, as its starting point to take a fresh look at the work of the two artists and to pay tribute to their creations.

The exhibition is complemented by photographs by Christian Borchert (1942–2000) and Jürgen Graetz (b. 1943), which depict Annemirl Bauer in her personal and artistic circles. Bärbel Bohley is featured in Barbara Klemm’s (*1939) iconic photograph taken on 4 November 1989, standing between Gregor Gysi and Heiner Müller during the large demonstration on Alexanderplatz, at which Bohley was one of the speakers. In Bohley’s print Manchmal ist Kunst abwesend!  for the Silberblick 3 portfolio (1989), the absence of art amidst political upheaval becomes a statement in itself. Elske Rosenfeld (b. 1974) takes up Bohley’s gesture in 2023 and transforms her text-based work into two images, a positive and a negative. In doing so, she shifts the message of the artist and political activist Bärbel Bohley and brings her ambivalence back into focus.