The exhibition at the Kunsthalle and Kunsthaus Nürnberg, jointly curated by Matthias Dachwald, Anne Schloen and Harriet Zilch, celebrates life, love, and desire beyond heteronormativity. It features works by Soufiane Ababri, Leigh Bowery, Katherine Bradford, Julia Bünnagel, Hans Diernberger & Will Saunders, Jochen Flinzer, Félix González-Torres, Harry Hachmeister, Keith Haring, Peter Hujar, Oliver Husain, Verena Issel, Sabrina Jung, Barish Karademir & Walter Schütze, Zora Kreuzer, Navot Miller, Mrzyk & Moriceau, Andreas Oehlert, Jens Pecho, Martin Pfeifle, Claus Richter, Chloe Sherman, Cindy Sherman, Otakar Skala, Andy Warhol, Thilo Westermann, and Tobias Zielony.
Kunsthalle and Kunsthaus Nürnberg
Königstrasse 93 | Lorenzer Strasse 2
90402 Nuremberg
October 21, 2023 – February 11, 2024
A catalog will be published to accompany the exhibition.
Brandon Elizares committed suicide on February 6, 2012 at the age of 16 in El Paso, Texas after having been severely bullied for many years. Classmates threatened to murder him because he was homosexual. Leelah Alcorn felt like a girl trapped in a boy’s body and was repeatedly subjected to “conversion therapy” by her parents. She took her own life at age 17. Alana Chen, a devout Catholic, ended her own life at the age of 24 due to the Church’s hostile attitude toward her homosexuality.
Studies show that young LGBTQIA+ people suffer from a higher rate of suicidal ideation. Thilo Westermann’s series of works, which he began in 2012, deal with the fate of people who do not feel accepted by those close to them or by society in general and who, as a result of systemic and societal abuse, ultimately commit suicide. After coating the backside of a glass plate with a thin layer of black paint, Westermann etches the portraits of the deceased dot by dot. Once completed, the picture is scanned, increased to several times its original size and exhibited behind glass in the form of a large-format print. Viewers see their own reflection in the glass along with the black-and-white portrait of the departed soul whose cry for change reverberates larger than life in Westermann’s pictures.
(Catalog text, Kunsthalle | Kunsthaus Nurnberg)
