BODY. The Female Gaze

Female Artists in the GDR

How do women see themselves when they escape the gaze of others? How does the image of the female body change when women artists become the subjects of their own vision? The Female Gaze understands the female body not as a surface onto which social expectations are projected, but as a site of lived experience, self-determination, and artistic inquiry.

While the male-dominated artistic canon has, for centuries, portrayed the female body primarily as an idealized, eroticized, or symbolic figure, women artists—particularly since the 1970s—have developed their own visual languages. Turning the gaze upon themselves, they explore identity, vulnerability, desire, and corporeality from their own perspective. The body is no longer merely observed; it speaks. It becomes a medium through which personal experiences are inscribed alongside broader social realities.

In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), artistic engagement with the body was shaped by distinct political and social conditions. Since gender equality was officially proclaimed as an accomplished reality, feminist discourse was largely marginalized or dismissed as unnecessary. At the same time, normative ideals of femininity, productivity, and social conformity persisted, leaving little room for individual or experimental forms of self-representation and alternative conceptions of identity.

Against this backdrop, women artists—particularly within the alternative art scene—developed visual strategies that resisted official representations of both the body and everyday socialist life. Photography, performance, and Super 8 film proved especially effective media through which to negotiate questions of identity, embodiment, and subjectivity while creating spaces of personal autonomy. Painting and sculpture likewise became important fields for investigating the body. Here, the body functions not only as a motif but also as a medium of reflection and self-definition. It became a space in which freedom could be imagined, experienced, and made visible beyond the confines of state ideology and social expectations.

The fall of the Berlin Wall fundamentally transformed the political landscape, yet questions of identity, the body, and memory remained central. Many women artists from the former East Germany were confronted with the challenge of repositioning both their biographies and their artistic practices within an art world largely shaped by Western institutions and discourses. The body continued to serve as a carrier of personal and collective memory, bearing witness to experiences of surveillance, loss, migration, and profound biographical rupture.

The exhibition opens on 12. February and will be on view until 27. June 2027 at the Stiftung Kunstforum Berliner Volksbank.