→ MUZEUM
SUSCH

 Gabriele Stötzer:

with Hand & Foot, Skin & Hair

Curated by 

 Daniel Blochwitz

Opening: 15 June 2025

This exhibition, the artist’s first in Switzerland, titled Mit Hand & Fuss, Haut & Haar — a German idiom denoting wholehearted commitment — focuses on a selection of photographic works by Gabriele Stötzer (*1953) dating from the early 1980s.

These images emphasize key intersections found in her art: between conscious action (hand and foot) and visceral intimacy (skin and hair). Works like Eine Hand voll (1982) or Ich bin / Angebunden (1984) highlight Stötzer’s profound reliance on the body as both an essential medium and an ultimate resort, serving her artistic practice and her social stance within the constraints and context of her life in East Germany, where artistic expression often became inseparable from defiance of state repression.

After being imprisoned in 1977 for signing a petition against the expatriation of singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann, she was subjected to ongoing Stasi surveillance and barred from official artistic institutions. Yet, as Christa Wolf wrote in her 1979/1989 story What Remains after encountering Stötzer: "The girl cannot be held back, I thought. We can't save her, can't spoil her. She should do what she must do and relinquish us to our own consciences." Shaped by necessity 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.

Stötzer’s photographs often depict the body as a site of intuitive expression, subtle protest, and/or radical transformation, while the corporeal details highlighted in this exhibition emerge as symbols of agency, vulnerability, and interconnectedness. Painterly gestures and mark-making also frequently appear in her artistic process — sometimes as a transformative element within performances, other times expressively applied directly onto the final photographic print, as seen in her series Übermalungen and Bemalungen (1982). This visual language resonates with her later ceramic sculptures, Wünschelruten (1995), from Grażyna Kulczyk’s collection, which represent fragments of female organs and lips — another motif that recurs in her photographs — underscoring the exhibition’s exploration of the body as a site of resistance and desire.

Photography, with its immediacy and accessibility, had become Stötzer’s primary medium in the 1980’s, mirroring its concurrent adoption by feminist and political artists around the globe. While sharing a media-specific vocabulary of emancipation, her work remained deeply embedded in the particularities of her cultural context. In this sense, the exhibition situates Stötzer’s art within Piotr Piotrowski’s concept of "horizontal art history,” decentering dominant Western narratives to embrace parallel histories. Although her work clearly resonates with international art practices, it retains a specificity rooted in the otherness of her experience. Emerging from a nexus of personal hardship, collective struggle, female solidarity, and political resistance, her imagery challenges linear readings of art history and enriches feminist discourse with a seminal, regionally grounded voice.

Mit Hand & Fuss, Haut & Haar invites viewers to engage with Gabriele Stötzer's evocative visual language and her use of the body as an intimate yet powerful means of expression. By incorporating works that allude to the artist’s engagement with other media — such as clay, textiles, or video — in a performance-centric practice, the exhibition expands its scope beyond photography while maintaining an emphasis on bodily motifs. Conceived as the second edition in the series OBJEKTIV (run by Barbara Piwowarska) at Muzeum Susch, the exhibition reflects on Stötzer’s legacy and its broader relevance to established narratives and discourses on art, autonomy, and identity.

Gabriele Stötzer Born in Emleben, East Germany, in 1953, Gabriele Stötzer studied to become a teacher in Erfurt before being expelled in the mid-1970’s for political reasons. Her continued dissent led to prosecution and a one-year prison sentence, an experience that profoundly shaped her artistic and activist trajectory. Even after her release, she remained under Stasi surveillance as she became active in the cultural underground, running an independent gallery and fostering a network of artists outside the official state-sanctioned system.  

Writing was her first means of artistic expression—initially as a way to process her imprisonment and later as a means of exploring identity, resistance, and collective solidarity. Her literary practice remained central throughout her career, often intertwining with her visual and performative work.

In the 1980’s, she developed a multidisciplinary practice that spanned photography, film, painting, performance, textiles, ceramics, artist books, and costume design, working extensively with women’s collectives to challenge state oppression and explore feminist themes. Collaboration played a central role in her art, as she sought alternative ways of creating and existing beyond the confines of official culture.

In December 1989, she played a pivotal role in the occupation of the Stasi (Ministry for State Security) headquarters in Erfurt—the first such action in the GDR—which was instrumental in exposing the scale of state surveillance and repression. Following German reunification, she continued her artistic and literary work, spending an extended period in the Netherlands before returning to Erfurt, where she still lives and works today.

Since 1990, Stötzer has published eight books and participated in numerous international exhibitions, including 'documenta 14' (2017) and shows at institutions such as the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and the Albertinum, Dresden. Her work has been increasingly recognized within broader narratives of feminist and political art, particularly in relation to dissident movements within the former Eastern Bloc.

Beyond her artistic practice, she teaches performance at the University of Erfurt and lectures widely on feminist art, collective artistic strategies, and her experiences as a contemporary witness to East Germany’s cultural resistance. In recognition of her contributions to art, social justice, and political history, she was awarded the Federal Republic of Germany’s Order of Merit in 2013.

Daniel Blochwitz is a Swiss-based photography curator, author, lecturer, and consultant known for his expertise and innovative approach to the medium. Born in Germany (*1973), he studied visual arts and photography in the United States, earning a Master’s degree from the University of Florida in 2003, with a minor in German Literature and Film. That same year, he participated in the 50th Venice Biennale (Utopia Station) as part of an international art collective. He then moved to New York at the invitation of the Whitney Museum to attend its Independent Study Program while working as an artist assistant to Martha Rosler. Following these formative years, he spent more than a decade working in contemporary art galleries in New York before relocating to Zurich to direct the Edwynn Houk Gallery.

Since 2015, Blochwitz has focused primarily on independent curatorial work, organizing solo and group exhibitions for museums, galleries, collections, festivals, and off-spaces, including on the work of Vivian Maier (2016), Arnold Odermatt (2017/2020), Lee Miller (2020), René Burri (2023), and Kathrin Linkersdorff (2024). He has also served as artistic director of photo basel, the first and only art fair in the German-speaking world dedicated to photo-based media, and as curator of the last three editions of Fotofestival Lenzburg.

As founding member of the 89plus working group at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh), Blochwitz has been actively engaged in researching and contextualizing photography from the GDR and East Germany, an interest that also informs his curatorial work. In addition, he has contributed essays and critical texts to various photography monographs, exhibition catalogs, and photo books, further shaping discourse on contemporary and historical photographic practices.

Blochwitz lives with his family in Zurich.

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