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Why should we be interested in what is, strictly speaking, none of our business? Where has our growing fascination with the private sphere come from? Artistic practices of the 1990s operate precisely in this field of tension when they claim to "honestly" reproduce private life experiences – or even stage them live. Wolfgang Tillmans photographed intimate scenes from his circle of friends; Félix González-Torres presented billboards with close-ups of his unmade bed in New York in 1992; Elke Krystufek masturbated at the Kunsthalle Wien in 1994. In this book, Elena Zanichelli examines artistic practices that visualize a sphere that is supposed to remain hidden, yet at the same time promises and regulates autonomy and freedom.
- Shows how the private sphere itself became a stage in artistic practices
- Offers a new, theoretically grounded perspective on intimate artistic self exposure
- First systematic study of how art makes the supposedly hidden visible, renegotiating autonomy, freedom, and their limits
Elena Zanichelli, Italian art historian, critic, and curator, currently Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Marburg and a board member of the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States in Berlin. From 2021-2023, she directed the Mariann Steegmann Institute. Art & Gender at the University of Bremen, and in 2022 she held the Gerda Henkel Visiting Professorship in the Department of German Studies at Stanford University, USA. Her work focuses on contemporary art since the neo-avant-garde, with an emphasis on video and performance art, the representation of the "private" in contemporary art, art and feminism, and family photographs in art and visual culture.
Elena Zanichelli, Italian art historian, critic, and curator, currently Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of Marburg and a board member of the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States in Berlin. From 2021-2023, she directed the Mariann Steegmann Institute. Art & Gender at the University of Bremen, and in 2022 she held the Gerda Henkel Visiting Professorship in the Department of German Studies at Stanford University, USA. Her work focuses on contemporary art since the neo-avant-garde, with an emphasis on video and performance art, the representation of the "private" in contemporary art, art and feminism, and family photographs in art and visual culture.