Maria Eichhorn

The German Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition—la Biennale di Venezia in 2022 will feature the artist Maria Eichhorn. By choosing Eichhorn, who was born in Bamberg in 1962 and lives in Berlin, the curator Yilmaz Dziewior has decided in favor of an internationally highly recognized artist known as much for her conceptual approach as for her subtle sense of humor. With her visually minimal gestures, spatial interventions, and process-based works, Eichhorn critically examines institutional power structures and political and economic interrelationships. Maria Eichhorn already drew wide notice in 2002 with her work 'Maria Eichhorn Aktiengesellschaft [Maria Eichhorn Public Limited Company]', which she realized for the Documenta 11 in Kassel. It consisted in the artist's founding a public limited company with a special status that prohibited it from increasing its capital. By presenting foundation documents and the 50,000-Euro equity capital—placed in a display case in a neat bundle of a hundred brand-new 500-Euro bills—, she made a striking commentary on the relationship between art and the economy. The 'Rose Valland Institute' founded by Maria Eichhorn in 2017 on the occasion of the documenta 14likewise gained international attention. The project, which is still in progress today in cooperation with various scholarly institutions, researches and documents the dispossession of Europe’s Jewish population. In a manner resembling her earlier projects—for example 'Restitutionspolitik / Politics of Restitution'(2003) and 'In den Zelten ...'(2015)—, Eichhorn thus raises the issue of unresolved ownership and property structures from 1933 to the present and the continued effects of Nazism. "Maria Eichhorn is the artist I have always wanted to see in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Because in my view there are few artists who address themselves to German history and its impact on the present in as multifaceted and intensive a manner as Maria Eichhorn." —Yilmaz Dziewior Maria Eichhorn's work has been on view in numerous solo and group exhibitions in prestigious institutions and at international biennials. The artist has been teaching at the Zurich University of the Arts since 2003. Commissioner: IFA - Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen Curator: Yilmaz Dziewior

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