Anys Reimann. Mirrorball

With Mirrorball the Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst is presenting the first solo museum exhibition of Anys Reimann (*1965, Düsseldorf). In her works, the artist explores the dynamic field of identity and body, of cultural affiliation and representation. She is known above all for pictures of Black women: self-confident, complex and challenging all at once. Reimann counters perspectives marked by western colonialism with pictorial worlds evincing a unique individuality. Her works celebrate the hybrid and the ambiguous. She cleverly combines fragments from art history, film, music, fashion and literature into a vibrating contemporary mythology. Icons and female outsiders, queer pictorial languages and an oppositional Black pop culture are omnipresent.

The exhibition in Bremen presents comprehensive insights into Reimann’s most recent creative output: large-format collage-paintings, enigmatic sculptures made of leather, mirror objects or bodily casts with clenched fists. Many works have a multi-sensory structure. Alongside the visual element, smell and touch play an essential role. Among other things, an olfactory sculpture is featured as part of the exhibition. Smells such as patchouli, incense, wood or spices play an important role for the artist. They are closely linked with memories that Reimann activates in her works in such a way as to combine the personal with the general.

Several new works were created for Mirrorball, including a black garden in the museum—a walk-in installation in the shape of an archipelago with plants that all have black leaves or blossoms; a sensory, almost unreal biotope to which smells have been added especially for this site.

Exhibition on Level 3

Curated by Ingo Clauß