The exhibition With Hand & Foot, Skin & Hair is Gabriele Stötzer's (*1953) first exhibition in Switzerland and focuses on a selection of her photographic works from the early 1980s.

The pictures illustrate central interfaces in her art: between conscious action (hand and foot) and deeply felt intimacy (skin and hair). Works such as Eine Hand voll (1982) or Ich bin / Angebunden (1984) illustrate Stötzer's pronounced trust in the body as a last resort and as the final authority that gave expression to her artistic practice and her social stance within the constraints and living conditions in the GDR - expression that was often inextricably linked to rebellion against state repression. After being imprisoned in 1977 for signing a petition against the expatriation of singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann, she continued to be monitored by the Stasi and excluded from official artistic institutions. But as Christa Wolf wrote in her story Was bleibt (1979/1989) after an encounter with Stötzer: "You can't hold the girl back, I thought. We can't save her, we can't spoil her. Let her do what she has to do and leave us to our own conscience." Characterized by urgency and a search for community as well as artistic and personal autonomy, Stötzer's work expanded from writing about her experiences to visual art - photography, performance and collective projects - making her body an extension of her voice.

Gabriele Stötzer, Eine Hand voll, 1982 © Gabriele Stötzer, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025, Courtesy LOOCK Galerie, Berlin.

Stötzer's photographs often show the body as a site of intuitive expression, subtle protest and/or radical transformation, while the body parts highlighted in this exhibition appear as symbols of agency, vulnerability and connectedness. Painterly gestures and traces are also frequently part of her creative process - sometimes as transformative elements in the context of performances, sometimes expressively applied directly to the final photographic print, as in her series Übermalungen und Bemalungen(1982). This visual language resonates in her later ceramic sculptures Wünschelruten (1995) from the collection of Grażyna Kulczyk, which depict fragments of female organs and lips - the latter another motif that recurs in her photographs - and illustrate the exhibition's engagement with the body as a site of both rebellion and desire.

Gabriele Stötzer, Overpainting Nora, 1982 © Gabriele Stötzer, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025, Courtesy LOOCK Galerie, Berlin.

Photography, with its immediacy and accessibility, had become Stötzer's medium of choice in the 1980s, in line with its contemporaneous use by feminist and political artists around the world. Although they shared a media-specific vocabulary of emancipation, Stötzer's work remained deeply rooted in the specificities of its cultural context. In this context, the exhibition situates Stötzer's work within Piotr Piotrowski's concept of a "horizontal art history", which seeks to decenter dominant Western narratives in favor of parallel histories. Although her work is clearly related to international art practices, it retains a specificity rooted in the otherness of her experience. Her paintings, which emerged from a combination of personal deprivation, collective commitment, female solidarity and political resistance, challenge linear readings of art history and enrich feminist discourse with a pioneering, regionally anchored voice.

The exhibition With Hand & Foot, Skin & Hair invites the public to explore Gabriele Stötzer's suggestive visual language and the use of the body as an intimate yet effective means of expression. By including works that allude to the artist's use of other media - such as sound, textiles or video - the exhibition expands its horizons beyond photography, with the focus remaining on physical motifs. The exhibition, conceived as the second edition of the OBJEKTIV series at Muzeum Susch directed by Barbara Piwowarska, is dedicated to Stötzer's legacy and its wider relevance in relation to established narratives and discourses on art, autonomy and identity.
June 15 to November 2, 2025
www.muzeumsusch.ch