WAS ICH WILL: Die Künstlerinnen der Galerie
Group exhibition
5 September – 24 October 2026
Opening
Saturday, 5 September, 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Fall tour of SpinnereiGalleries
Saturday, 5 September, 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Sunday, 6 September, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m.
The Leipzig gallery is barrier-free. A a wheelchair ramp is on site.
Please contact us in case of any further questions at +49-341-9607886.
Music: Trixi Linden (Instrumental Version "Was ich will")
Film & Edit: @galerie_eigenart
Polyphony
When a gallery’s female artists come together as individuals to participate in a joint exhibition, that event takes on a special significance. The seventeen artists were invited to create or select works that—under the title „WAS ICH WILL" (What I want)—explore the diverse facets of female life and experience. "Was ich will" suggests a sense of certainty, a firm footing, a realization, which is, however, repeatedly undermined and made to waver. In any case, the title represents a declaration.
The polyphony of their artistic voices rises up, leading from art into life itself. It leads to memories and longings; to loved ones, fears, and traumas; to the questions of who we are, who we are made into, and who we shape ourselves to be; and to who remains when certain facades or frameworks fall away—when only hope survives (yet what immense strength it can provide!), when sadness is so profound that one can cling only to the most elemental things, when war has taken so much. Into what do we dissolve when the digital world becomes more real than the ground beneath our feet?
All this and more resonates here, taking shape across a variety of media. There are romantic links to the past—portraits of a generation from over a century ago, captured in a photographer’s studio as keepsakes for those from whom the Great War would soon tear them away. Then there is a drum kit that pulls us into the present, celebrating the youthful vitality of the here and now, while simultaneously raising the unbearable thought: what if this young drummer—this child in early bloom—were forced to go to war? His focused playing, beat after beat, echoes the style of military bands yet remains worlds apart from them.
Then, the abstracted framework of a swing. The model for this abstraction was destroyed in another war; it becomes a symbol of a stolen opportunity for childlike exuberance. It stands for the loss of a place where one could once play in peace. The swing fragment now stands in the land of refuge—the new home of the child and their mother.
In another work, black blossoms—presumably violets—are caught in a self-sustaining cycle. A liquid drips from one blossom into the other, trickling into it. They are connected by a tube, facilitating a continuous transfer. Once "modest and pure"—as the charming verse in an old-fashioned friendship book would have it—they no longer appear so, given their black color and greasy surfaces. Here, the work alludes to the genetic inheritance of trauma and the impossibility of escaping it.
Finally, the significance of love in the digital age is a key question. Dating platforms offer the capitalist promise of endless possibilities, culminating in the hope that the ideal match can be found with a simple swipe. However, the pressure to achieve perfection in relationships can reach terrifying, unrealistic heights when the actual relationship is compared with the supposedly possible future one, which has only been imagined in the digital realm so far. This devalues the actual relationship.
It is impossible to escape the radiance and potency emanating from the works in this exhibition. They radically question and deconstruct; they build new visions; they are dreamscapes and harsh realities; they are at times delicate and subtle, at others rather confrontational. They are as diverse as our own lives, yet one can always connect one’s own experiences and feelings to them as shared human encounters.
"Was ich will" is like an outcry—more urgent than ever.
Dr. Elisa Tamaschke
Translation Hagen Hamm
The exhibition features recent works by Maja Behrmann, Birgit Brenner, Cihan Çakmak, Louisa Clement, Stella Hamberg, Stef Heidhues, Christine Hill, Gabrielle Kruger, Melora Kuhn, Lada Nakonechna, Madeleine Roger-Lacan, Ricarda Roggan, Yehudit Sasportas, Kristina Schuldt, Annelie Štrba, Ulrike Theusner, and Mirjam Völker.