DELAINE LE BAS

In her exhibitions, she stages spaces and creates moods; works and artifacts merge into an overall image. Her approach to materials could also be described as sustainable: she works with all means, pragmatic and inventive, with found objects, painting, film, drawing, embroidery, sculpture and video. Some exhibitions are marked by very personal and biographical explorations, while still others deal with more structural and political issues, such as the social position, discrimination and exclusion of marginalised groups.

In her feminist practice, the artist Delaine Le Bas has long been preoccupied with extraordinary female figures such as goddesses, visionaries, and witches. She recently installed a giant goddess in the garden of the Maxim-Gorki-Theater in Berlin, transforming the site into a scene of contemplation, encounter, and consciousness-raising, with workshops, conversations, rituals, and ceremonies rehearsing the culture of post-patriarchy. Little wonder, then, that Klimt’s mythological visual language in the Beethoven Frieze, and especially the demonized female figures such as the Gorgons, drew her interest: the sketchbooks the artist produced as she prepared for the exhibition include numerous studies rendering her interpretations of motifs from the frieze.

Text courtesy Secession