Birgit Jürgenssen. Ich bin.

Birgit Jürgenssen (1949-2003) belongs, along with VALIE EXPORT and Maria Lassnig to the artistic avant-garde of the 1970s in Austria. Subsequent generations of artists throughout the world were deeply influenced by her creative output as an artist, teacher and observer of cultural and social conditions. Tying into art-historical traditions such as Surrealism and Antiquity, she developed an autonomous and varied oeuvre which, in addition to a rich store of drawings and photographs, also includes sculptures, objects, videos and collaborative projects. The exhibition Ich bin. (‚I am.‘) presents the extensive oeuvre of Jürgenssen in all its facets and thus enables the rediscovery of one of the most exciting artists of her generation.

With a discerning gaze, a poetic sense and a subversive, sometimes biting humour, Jürgenssen’s multifaceted oeuvre focuses in repeated inquiries on the role of the woman in our society in its various manifestations: interpersonal relationships, sexuality, socially established concepts of beauty, relations between the sexes or the individual‘s identity. In addition to these social discourses and as a consequence of her investigation of her own corporeality, Jürgenssen repeatedly examines the relationships between human, animal and plant; her metamorphic arrangements give rise to poetical hybrid beings that seem to dissolve our conceptual distinctions.

„There were some well-known male artists who dominated the art Scene in Vienna back then [in the 1970s] and who believed that women could not draw or paint. It challenged me to undermine, illustrate and protray this idea of what I was seen to be. It was an attempt to take seriously the view that comes to me from outside.“ Birgit Jürgenssen, Interview with Rainer Metzger, in: Kunstforum International, Band 64, 2003

For the first time in central and northern Germany

Under the title I am.,  the Weserburg Museum for Modern Art is displaying some 150 works by Birgit Jürgenssen in her first comprehensive presentation in central and northern Germany.

The exhibition is taking place in cooperation with the Estate Birgit Jürgenssen in Vienna, the Kunsthalle Tübingen, the GAMeC Museum in Bergamo and the Museum Louisiana in Copenhagen.

It is being curated by Natascha Burger, Estate Birgit Jürgenssen in Vienna, and Janneke de Vries, Weserburg Museum for Modern Art (based on an idea of Natascha Burger and Nicole Fritz).

A comprehensive catalogue has been published by Prestel Verlag.

Exhibition on floor 3