Wiebke Siem (*1954 in Kiel) became known in the 1990s for her large-scale installations in which she modified everyday objects such as pieces of clothing, shoes, bags and toys or translated them into oversized objects. From pieces of furniture and household objects as well as bizarre, often marionette-like figures, the artist creates psychologically charged installations that are as oppressive as they are humorous. In addition to motifs borrowed from art and cultural history, the critical examination of the mechanisms of the male-dominated art business plays an important role in Siem’s oeuvre. Thus, her work repeatedly questions social role models. The artist’s formal language and mode of presentation also refer to ethnological objects and collections and in this way bring the problematic strategies of appropriation of non-European art in modernity into view.
These themes, which the artist has consistently pursued for decades and for which she continually finds new forms of expression, make her work more topical today than ever before.
The exhibition offers an overview of Wiebke Siem’s sculptural work from the 1980s to the present day. In the interactive installation Der Traum der Dinge (”What things dream”), visitors can assemble their own figures or abstract structures from parts and pieces provided by Wiebke Siem and thus slip into the role of the artist.
In cooperation with the Kunstmuseum Den Haag and the Museum der Moderne Salzburg.
