Else Gabriel, born 1962 in Halberstadt, Germany, residing in Berlin
Ullf Wrede, born 1968 in Potsdam, Germany, residing in Berlin
The 1960s is known for introducing “individual mythology” to the art world. This is how the curator of Kassel’s Document 5 referred in 1972 to the artistic movement focusing on the individual, often very private experiences that create an artist’s world. This approach was a radical change in the modernist understanding of art in the 1960s, which repressed the private sphere in favour of sublime thought, as demonstrated by American abstract impressionists.
Today, it is rather common for artists to incorporate these elements into their work. And from the very beginning, it was mainly female artists who followed this movement, not only because it allowed them to distance themselves from the artistic tendencies that were then dominated by men, but mainly because it gave them the opportunity to search for and then define their identity as female artists.
Else Gabriel is an artist who involves the whole family in her creative project Else Twin Gabriel: her musician husband Ullf Wrede has been working with her since 1991, and even her two children, Linus and Greta, were gradually involved in her art. Perhaps as a parody on heroic creations with the brushes of ostentatious American painters, Gabriel used her little daughter in 2007 as a brush in her performance “Kind als Pinsel (Kooperatorka)” (Child as a Brush (Collaborator)). She has also performed with her children in “The Sacred Families” or “Escape from Egypt”. In 2006, Gabriel went to the Berlin labour office with her children and waited in a queue like ordinary unemployed people. She documented this “waiting” with photographs. “It is partially performed, but we also actually joined in with the people,” Gabriel explains about her series of photographs from the world of the unemployed, who are not often the subject of art.
This author is also capable of provoking reactions, as in her series “Die tote Familie” (The Dead Family) from 2004: the images of a dead family make a conscious reference to the suicide of the Goebbels family, as well as to the dead terrorists from RAF, as illustrated by Gerhard Richter according to police photographs. Death that was for hundreds of years present in art – if we think of the crucifixion of Christ – is avoided for the most part in contemporary art. Why? As Gabriel explains, “Looking at death, even with dignity, always portrays something dreadful, something strangely sickening that people are immediately uncomfortable with.”
Text by Noemi Smolik
