Gabriele Stötzer
On Fleeing into the Public

paperback
12 cm x 16 cm
128 pages

English

with texts and an interview by Gabriele Stötzer

edited by Jenny Schlenzka and Julia Grosse

design: Stoodio Santiago da Silva

released in connection with the exhibition Gabriele Stötzer: Dabei sein und nicht schweigen at Gropius Bau, 19.06.-06.12.2026

This is the forth title in the book series The Practice – What Moves Artists by Gropius Bau, that invites artists to showcase a practice that they pursue, that has influenced them or that has been with them for a long time.

ISBN 978-3-948546-55-7

Eine deutsche Ausgabe ist hier erhältlich.

For Gabriele Stötzer, as part of the artistic underground in the GDR, seeking refuge in the public eye was always a subversive practice. Being in the public eye meant protection from isolation and state repression: through witnessing, friendship and solidarity.

Stötzer’s experimental photographs, Super 8 films, performances and actions in public spaces were often created collaboratively and in self-organised spaces. At the same time, they are an expression of radical subjectivity and tell of vulnerability and desire.

In this book, new drawings are superimposed over the artist’s photographic archive and traverse a conversation that revolves around the relationship between the underground and the public, her beginnings as an artist and the continuation of her work.

Confronted with growing authoritarian forces, Stötzer’s artistic strategies demonstrate individual and collective forms of action that can be a model for us right now.