Katharina Sieverding

Katharina Sieverding (born, 1944) is a photographer known for her self-portraiture. Sieverding lives and works in Berlin and Düsseldorf. She is a professor at the University of the Arts, Berlin.

Early life and education

Sieverding was born in Prague. She began studying art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1964. There she started studying stage design under Teo Otto, but later joined the sculpture class taught by Joseph Beuys in 1967. Her fellow students included Blinky Palermo and Imi Knoebel. Between 1971 and 1974, she was part of the film class at the Kunstakademie. In 1976, she took part in the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Work

Sieverding's works consist of self-portraiture and most have an abstract quality. She uses the techniques of silhouette, contrast, and extreme close-up to make the photograph more revealing of herself. Her work often makes statements about society and the individual, such as showing the familiarity of the self and the distance of others. Often she puts multiple portraits together in one piece. Each portrait fills the frame in a way to show the presence of self.

Since 1975, Sieverding, along with her partner Klaus Mettig, has also made political statements through her photography using both German and American history as the basis. Her work has therefore frequently triggered debates on contemporary society, politics, social and cultural issues, one example being her poster installations “Deutschland wird Deutscher” of 1993 and “Die Pleite” of 2005 in Greater Berlin. The “Stauffenberg-Block” was named after Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, an officer who tried to assassinate Hitler. “The Great White Way Goes Black” is a piece that refersto the New York City blackout of summer 1977.

In 1992, Sieverding was commissioned to design the memorial to the parliamentarians persecuted in the Weimar Republic. It is on display at the Reichstag in Berlin.

Notable photographs

• “The Great White Way Goes Black”
• ”Stauffenberg-Block”
• ”Motorkamera”
• ”XVII”
• ”Die Sonne um Mitternacht schauen”
• ”Untitled (Ultramarine)”
• ”Maton”

Films

• ”Life-Death”
• ”Beijing, Yanan, Xian, Luoyang”
• ”Shanghai”

Major exhibitions

Sieverding took part in documenta in 1972, 1977 und 1982, and in 1997 she exhibited in the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Her solo exhibitions include: Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (1998); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1998); Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf (1997-8); Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (1993); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (1992). Collective exhibition: Les Rencontres d'Arles, France (2010). In the US her works have been shown at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and ICA, Boston. In 2004/05 New York’s MoMA PS1 and Kunst-Werke Berlin presented an extensive survey of her work.

References and links

• "Katharina Sieverding: Close Up" MoMA P.S.1
• list of links
• Fricke, Harald. "Intimacy on a Large Scale: A Conversation with Katharina Sieverding" db artmag.
• Katharina Sieverding on re-title.com