Patrizia Bach Wins Kunst-am-Bau Competition

With her two-part work Trotzdem küsse ich deine Nasenspitze (I still kiss the tip of your nose), former Solitude fellow Patrizia Bach has won a Kunst-am-Bau (side-specific art for architecture) competition for the foyer of the Elisabeth-Selbert-Haus in Berlin Unter den Linden.

The competition, organized by the Bundesanstalt für Immobilienaufgaben (Federal Institute for Real Estate Tasks), envisions the realization of the work in a new office building for the administration of the German Bundestag, the Elisabeth-Selbert-Haus. After the planned completion and handover of the building to the German Bundestag in 2027, Patrizia Bach’s wall drawings will extend across the entire wall of the foyer.

In her work, which was created in close collaboration with the Robert Havemann Society – Archive of the GDR Opposition, the artist explores the history of the independent women’s movement in the former GDR. The intensive research of archival material resulted in 260 individual drawings, inspired by photographs and samizdat publications from the archives, such as GrauZone. The work is complemented by a QR code, allowing visitors to access an online publication specifically programmed for this purpose. This publication will enable viewers to discover the stories behind the drawings through AI image recognition, in the form of quotes, texts, and archival material.

The jury especially highlighted the procedural approach of the work in their evaluation: applied by hand with a Polychromos pencil, the work includes not only the detailed drawings, which intentionally remain abstract and fragmentary, but also hand and finger marks that evoke the nocturnal printing actions of flyers and samizdat publications on matrix printing machines. These machines, which churches provided to women at great risk, were used by women who would leave with their fingers stained and often leave their mark on the prints. By leaving the drawings unfixed, they can metaphorically »rub off« on the visitors.

On her website Patrizia Bach states: »This work is dedicated to the courage and perseverance of all the women involved, whose great actions irrevocably changed their own lives and who were often punished with deprivation of liberty, state surveillance and banishment.«