In poetry, the rose often serves as a metaphor for feminine beauty, grace, and innocence—delicate blooming blossoms in pastel shades, or deeply red flowers standing for love and passion. Mind you, they all have thorns. The roses in these works, however, have bloomed, withered, dried. They speak of the passing of time, (and thus also of the passing or perhaps the change of beauty)—this becomes even more evident once we know that these roses were given to the artist by her husband on her birthdays. Susanne Weber-Lehrfeld dried them carefully so she could use them in her complex, multilayered works. The first line of William Blake’s famous poem The Sick Rose comes to mind here: “O Rose, thou art sick”; at the end of the short poem, the rose’s death is foretold: “And his dark secret love /Does thy life destroy”. Here, however, no life is destroyed, but rather, life with all its struggles is: celebrated.

The furs that run like a leitmotif through her oeuvre come from her mother’s seemingly inexhaustible collection, and indeed her work circles again and again around the model of femininity that her mother exemplified for the artist, a model with which she critically engages and from which she radically liberates herself. These furs were status symbols used to display wealth, one might call them trophies, just like the women who wore them were also sometimes trophies. Weber-Lehrfeld changes their meaning, in the performance, she frees herself from the constricting, burdensome furs, and simultaneously also liberates the furs from their function. In the two-part work Spuren [Traces] they seem to follow the call to “Dance at the full moon,” refusing their designation as ornamental accessories und performing a choreography of their own.

Susanne Weber-Lehrfeld, then, engages with the large questions: beauty, femininity, transience, age, and, yes, also death. The artist speaks of being fascinated by the beauty of the morbid. Susanne Weber-Lehrfeld addresses these issues with radical honesty, and yet these works don’t exude any sense of lasting melancholia; rather, they attest to life experience, joie de vivre, and optimism. This lust for life is perhaps especially evident in the light-footed dance on flowers (Spiel) and the wonderfully dynamic painterly panel Untitled 12.

It is important to the artist that the works should transport a certain energy. The creative process is to remain visible—with all the precision and aesthetic rigor of the works, this is more important to her than any notion of perfection in terms of craftsmanship. She says herself that she always searches for perfection in the imperfect. This is why every seam is stitched by hand, for example in Rosig 1. This is indeed a test of patience for the artist, who doesn’t count patience among her strong points, and at the same time a chance to pause and do contemplative work. 

Her subjects are clearly conceived, the material is chosen carefully, but the realization of the work is often more intuitive. The artist cannot explain many of her decisions, stating merely “that’s just how it had to be” in conversations about her pieces. In terms of interpretation, these works are radically open and call on the beholder engage with them both rationally and emotionally. If we really do that, they resonate for a long time.

Susanne Weber-Lehrfeld is both a visual artist and a performance artist, and these aspects of her artistic practice are strongly connected. This becomes especially clear when we consider how her materials are used in different ways, in a kind of closed system. For example, for her object-like, downright sculptural collages, she uses video stills from her performances printed on canvas, which adds another layer of meaning. In Rosig 3 it is a still from the video of her performance Welche Nahrung gibst du deiner Seele [What food do you give your soul] with World War Two bunkers in Brittany in the background. The abstract figure, the corpus made of roses in the center of the work, can be associated with a crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. The golden rose above on the right could be a reference to the star of Bethlehem. Asked about the clearly Christian iconography of this work, Susanne Weber-Lehrfeld is initially surprised, but then speaks about her Roman Catholic socialization. It is clear that the subconscious plays an important role in her oeuvre, and once more that these works are quite open: the interpretation is left to the beholder, the titles also avoid even the suggestion of an interpretation.

These are decidedly feminine works—not at all in the sense of girlish playfulness, but in their unequivocally feminist stance. It is no accident that Weber-Lehrfeld names Marina Abramović und Louise Bourgeois when asked about her influences and role models. We are confronted here with a critical engagement with the social conventions of femininity and with issues of liberation from these conventions, and a push for self-empowerment.

All this is exemplified in the triptych Rosig Pelzig that lends its title to the exhibition. It is perhaps the most radical work in this show. The art historical references range from Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Dürer’s depictions of Eve to Kirchner’s Traurige Frau and of course Helmut Newton’s provocative nudes. But in contrast to the tradition to which they refer, the subject here is not a young woman. The gleaming golden roses in Rosig Pelzig direct our gaze precisely to what they hide, namely crotch and breasts, and the third part is reminiscent of Hamlet’s famous “Alas!, poor Yorick” soliloquy in the graveyard scene, where Hamlet, holding Yorick’s skull and gazing at it, reflects on transience, death, and his own mortality. The furs play a different role here than in many other works. As a kind of loincloth in the central image, and a protective cape in the third, they provide protection and at the same time are an erotically charged accessory. Completely liberated from any shame, the work confidently and radically celebrates the eroticism of an ageing body. The liberating effect is considerable.

The performance EPPUR SI MUOVE, finally, is characterized by a collaborative approach—both poetry and music play important roles here. It is inspired by the fairytale-like story Zurückgekehrt [Returned] by the German-French poet and writer Antemanha, where furs come alive. Here, too, as with all the works in this exhibition, the issue is female self-liberation, self-discovery, and the recovery of agency. The performance is accompanied by a reading of Antemanha’s poem Fell Inventar [Fur Inventory], which opens up space for associations, thoughts, and emotions. Cedric Douhaire’s electronic music carries the movement of the performance, which is characterized by an impressive radicality, courage, and wit.

This art has an agenda, it wants to set things in motion and break away from traditional paradigms.

And it moves us.

Wilhelm Werthern
Art editor, German edition of LE MONDE diplomatique