Fotocredits: Dusko Miljanic, Bildrecht, 2021

‚PUBLIC/PRIVATE‘, Site-Specific Installation, City Museum Podgorica, MNE, 2023

The exhibition TAKE BACK THE SPACE shows current works by the five Upper Austrian artists Renate Billensteiner, Judith Gattermayr, Petra Gell, Sigrid Krenner and Miriam Roithinger. The title TAKE BACK THE SPACE is based on the name of the feminist initiative „Take back the streets“, which occurs in Austria in the form of rallies and demonstrations against patriarchal social structures. The exhibition is also dedicated to revealing and breaking down patriarchal structures.

TAKE BACK THE SPACE addresses the reconquest of space. Something is recaptured that was supposed to be freely accessible but was lost. Space has many faces. For example, space represents power, opportunity, ability to act, decision-making power, reputation and value. Those who have power also have space. The fact that women* have been pushed back into the private sphere for centuries – and are still being pushed back – is the result of an unequal distribution of power. This unequal distribution becomes clearly visible through the underrepresentation of women* in public, for example in the media and politics, in the cityscape in the form of street names and monuments, in medical studies and last but not least in art history.

The possibilities of female artists, that means which training, presentation areas and financial security are granted to them, reflect the gender roles of a society. As a logical consequence, art is still a male-dominated space with a long tradition.

Female positions were deliberately chosen for TAKE BACK THE SPACE. Making and showing art is closely linked to visibility and the public. Art is an instrument to take up space, to articulate oneself, to be seen and heard. Making art means taking actions, making points of view visible and sharing them. In the context of the exhibition, the participating artists investigate the dynamics of space and gender. Large-format and in different media, they negotiate artistic strategies of appropriating space, point out the causes of space limitation and rethink the gendering of space. Using painting, site-specific installations, objects and photography, they put identity and role models, materiality, and body spaces to the test.

With her feminist-artistic spatial practice, Petra Gell calls for equal coexistence beyond the prevailing gender classifications. Her art is directed against the capitalist meritocracy and calls for more space for thinking and acting in solidarity. With expansive installations, she refers to social and spatial inequalities. In TAKE BACK THE SPACE, she creates a site-specific work directly in the exhibition space that deals with the gender assignment of material and space. Under the title PUBLIC/PRIVATE, she installs materials with male and female connotations, such as Ytong stones and corrugated iron from the construction industry, as well as curtains and carpets from the home. In doing so, she raises the issue that private space is still read as female and public space as male. By installing the materials on an equal footing, she consciously breaks with these attributions. In addition, as an artist, she temporarily lodges herself in the exhibition space, literally occupying the architecture of the art market.

https://www.dorftv.at/video/42942

https://www.diekunstsammlung.at/3596.htm

https://www.undp.org/montenegro/news/undps-artistic-talks-role-art-and-culture-empowering-women-0

Fotocredits: Ken Schluchtmann, Bildrecht

BEYOND SPACE

HAMBURG
MeetFrida Art Space, 2022

BERLIN
Meetfrida Artspace, Kantgaragen, 2022

Two locations, nine artists, one project: the group exhibition BEYOND SPACE combines different artistic positions who deal with the topic of ‚space‘ in a variety of individual approaches. What is space? Which poses procesess shape private and public spaces? And what is your relationship to them?

With BEYOND SPACE we extend and question the space and places in which we experience art.
The exhibition takes place simultaneously in two different locations: in our Meet Frida Artspace in Stilwerk Hamburg and in the soon be opend Stilwerk Berlin.

Participating artists: Renata Palekcic, Ju Schnee, Petra Gell, Mark Einsiedel und Felix Jung, Jana Schuhmacher, Tanja Hehmann, Joana Lucas, Offbeat und Stephan Hohenthanner

Fotocredits: Petr Dvorák, Bildrecht

INSPIRATION 2: GRAPHIC OF THE SPACE

The main starting point of Petra Gell’s work is an exploration of possible interactions between space and surface, a reflection on the architectural condition or a sociological and philosophical reflection on the possibilities generated by architecture. With her site-specific installations bordering between graphic and object, she intervenes in an architectural space and sets its basic building blocks into new relationships.

In her intervention in Villa Tugendhat, Petra thematises the feeling that as a woman who combines raising children with a career, she has no space for herself. This follows Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, which was first published in 1929 – the same year that Grete Tugendhat approached the visionary Mies van der Rohe as the architect of her new home.

The design was co-authored by his longtime collaborator Lilly Reich. Several elements of the interior furnishings bear her signature, especially the textile elements. For example, the curtains in the main living space are designed as movable walls, which allow for the variability of its division, which is very important in the concept of this iconic space.

The rooms in the house, especially the bedrooms, have a clear gender-specific distinction in terms of colour and furnishings: a desk and blue shades for Fritz (and a work area in the main living room); a mirror with a dressing table and cherry red upholstery for Greta.

However, Greta Tugendhat, like Lily Reich, did not fulfil the ideas of her time about the typical feminine role – she was highly educated and modern, she was intensely focused on art and philosophy, and worked for the League for Human Rights. In practice, her behaviour thus transcended these gender-specific attributes.

With her project INSPIRATION 2: Graphic of the Space, Petra Gell creates fictional spaces in the form of at least small corners that do not have to be shared with anyone. This makes us think about the common architectural and urban settings or the (in)equality of opportunities and space for the genders.

Curated by Neli Hejkalová

13. 9. 2022, 6 p.m. opening
14. 9. – 30. 10. 2022 exhibition
20. 9. 2022, 6:30 p.m. artist talk – Petra Gell & Bernadette Krejs

https://www.tugendhat.eu/en/vila-online/moznosti-inspirace-architekturou/inspirace-2-graphic-of-the-space/