ESSEN.- Museum Folkwang is presenting the exhibition by Swedish artists Johanna Ehde and Elisabeth Rafstedt from Rietlanden Women’s Office (RWO) as part of the 6 ½ Weeks series.

In Banners for Heresies, Rietlanden Women's Office (RWO) thematises both the former New York-based feminist magazine Heresies (1977-1993) and the term ‘heresy’ itself. Johanna Ehde (*1987) and Elisabeth Rafstedt (*1986) have appropriated this polemical term to illustrate their concept of graphic design, in which they combine and reactivate design elements, printing methods and work processes.

In their graphic design studio, they work with archive material from historical publications that were published as part of radical feminist activism against capitalism, imperialism and patriarchy in the second half of the 20th century. In their examination of historical sources, they trace how this attitude is reflected not only in the content, but also in the material itself - particularly in the prints of the late 1960s to early 1990s. RWO takes up this tradition: Women have their own means of production, write, design and print themselves. The result is multi-layered print products with visible traces of the manual process that convey urgent, resistant or concealed political messages. The result of this experimental practice is the self-published publication series MsHeresies.

The textile banners shown in the exhibition are created in a similar process. Ehde and Rafstedt emphasise format, composition and a painterly aesthetic. This can be seen in the monotypes, which they produce using digital sublimation printing and combine with text fragments. Type, which is worked with ornaments and embroidery and emphasises the improvisational moment of success and failure in the printing process as well as the design and publication, becomes an expression of collective feminist practice.

Johanna Ehde and Elisabeth Rafstedt were born in Sweden and now live in Amsterdam. They founded Rietlanden Women's Office there in 2018. Both are graduates of the graphic design department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and teach book design and typography together at various institutions across Europe.

The 6 ½ Weeks exhibition format is based on short-term planning and offers young artists the opportunity to present their works at Museum Folkwang. It offers space for artistic and curatorial experiments and enables visitors to discover as yet unknown artists from different countries.