REMAGEN.- With the exhibition Regendering DADA, the Arp Museum is focussing for the first time on the role of women in Dada which has been neglected to this day.
The Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck presents a comprehensive exhibition titled Regendering DADA until 12 January 2025. The show examines the significance of women artists in the DADA movement for the first time. In addition to works by Hannah Höch, Sonia Delaunay and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, works by female artists who have received little or no mention in art historiography for many decades are being shown. These include, for example, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Angelika Hoerle and Suzanne Duchamp, as well as numerous other DADA women, who are presented alongside their male colleagues on an equal footing. Around 200 paintings, works on paper, photographs and films as well as archive material are on display. The exhibition was curated by Dr Julia Wallner, Director of the Arp Museum, together with Helene von Saldern and Joëlle Warmbrunn.
Founded in 1916 in the artists’ pub Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, run by Emmy Hennings and Hugo Ball, DADA quickly developed into an international and cross-border movement, to which collectives and individual artists in New York, Paris, Berlin, Hanover and Cologne also felt a sense of belonging.
“At its core, DADA was a revolutionary movement that saw itself as a creative form of protest against war, militarism and the mechanisation of life. The participants aimed to interpenetrate art and life,” says Julia Wallner. Language, dance, music and graphic visual means of expression formed the basic vocabulary with which a form of existence that liberated people was to be developed. Actions, performative stagings, soirées and happenings on stages or on the street were also essential for this.
One aspect that is being shown for the first time in the DADA exhibition is the significance of gender roles and sexuality, as well as their diversity and fluidity. With cross-dressing photographs by Man Ray, for example, the exhibition shows that not only women freed themselves from their ascribed roles – men also encountered gender in a Dadaist manner. Regendering DADA thus draws a connecting line from the socially innovative positions of the avant-garde to contemporary, highly topical discourses.
In order to address the time-based character of DADA art, which was based on improvisation and situational experience, the Arp Museum has invited contempo- rary artists to transfer contents and make them tangible: with a sound installation by Susan Philipsz, a research-based film by Barbara Visser, a dance performance by Brygida Ochaim and DADA texts, intonated by Dirk von Lowtzow. The exhibition will also be accompanied by an extensive programme.
The exhibition catalogue was edited by Julia Wallner and published by Hirmer Verlag with contributions by Astrid von Asten, Christa Baumberger, Ina Boesch, Simone Gehr, Nora Gomringer, Talia Kwartler, Agathe Mareuge, Brygida Ochaim, Helene von Saldern, Isabel Schulz, Ursula Ströbele, Julia Wallner and Joëlle Warmbrunn.
“Women, if you want to realize yourselves – you are on the eve of a devastating psycho-logical upheaval – all your little illusions must be exposed – the lies of centuries must disappear – are you ready for the big jolt –? There are no half measures – no mere scratching of the surface of the littered heap of tradition will bring reform, the only way is Absolute Destruction.” --- MINA LOY, FEMINIST MANIFESTO, 1914
“Not only the capitalist economy, but also all truth, order, law, morality, everything masculine and feminine is in dissolution.” --- RAOUL HAUSMANN, 1918
