Feminist Art History and/in the Erstwhile Eastern Bloc
In the last fifteen years or so art historians and visual culture researchers have slowly but steadily begun to turn attention to women’s art production in socialist Eastern Europe. Former East Germany (GDR) has posed one of the greatest challenges to feminist revisionist art histories—unlike other state socialist projects that underwent a transformation period and ostensibly emerged as liberal democratic nations, the GDR disappeared in the reunification process. The result has been a gaping absence in the visibility of women’s artistic practices in East Germany with national focus, instead, put on women artists from what was West Germany. For this reason, the textual reference materials included here give an overview of different entry points into thinking women’s art production in socialist Eastern Europe with a particular emphasis on research on the GDR. Altmann’s exhibition The Media Insurrection stands as a pioneering example in this regard in its investigation of art created in East Germany in relation to Eastern Europe rather than the West.
Talk Me Through...

Talk Me Through... is a five-episode podcast series that take listeners inside works of art that have been key in the development of Susanne Altmann’s research project When Technology Was Female. In episode one Altmann discusses works by photographer Evelyn Richter and painter Doris Ziegler. Listen to episode one here.
Left: Evelyn Richter, Selbstinszenierung, TU Dresden, 1952. S/W-Fotografie / Barytpapier. Kunstfonds, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. © SKD, Photo: Stefanie Recsko. Right: Doris Ziegler, Brigade ‘Rosa Luxemburg’, Portrait Eva, 1975. Oil on hardboard, 125 x 80 cm. Collection of Lindenau-Museum Altenburg, Photo: Bertram Kober / PUNCTUM. © VG Bild-Kunst, 2019.
Visual references

Clockwise from upper left: Cornelia Schleime, Bodypainting action in Hüpstadt (1981), photograph painted over, 18 x 13 cm; Adriene Šimotova, Gesicht (1986), relief object and paper, 45 x 50 cm; Evelyn Richter, Selbstinszenierung, TU Dresden (1952), black & white photography; Geta Brătescu, The Traveller (1970), wooden folding chair and paper print, 89 x 23,5 cm.

Ewa Partum, Poem by Ewa (1972), paper, lipstick and ink; Zofia Kulik, Brief aus Mailand (Aktivität auf dem Koffer), 21 Stadien (1972), inkjet print 65 x 44 cm; Natalia LL, Natalia ist Sex (1974), photographic installation, 13 photographs, 60 x 60 cm.

Installation view of the garbage costume (top) and photographic documentation of the protagonists (bottom) from the performance The Top of Meat Mountain (1986).

Zorka Ságlová, Kladení plín u Sudoměře (Laying Diapers at Sudoměře), series of b/w photographs, 30 x 40 cm each.
