ASSOCIATION OF GERMAN CRITICS

Gisela Weimann, Critics’ Prize 2002 for Visual Art

Text of the Laudatio by Professor Dr. Stefanie Endlich

For decades the artist has been engaged consistently in cross-border projects. This could be seen in her retrospective exhibition “Leben im Spiegel” (Life in a Mirror) in the summer of 2001, which first prompted the critics to honour her with this award. Gisela Weimann crosses frontiers with cosmopolitan projects and cooperative ventures in and outside Europe. The breadth and variety of her artistic forms of expression and working techniques range from painting and printmaking, photography and film, mail art installations and environments to multimedia projects, events, performances and art in public spaces. She leaps over the boundaries between artistic genres by means of intercultural and interdisciplinary cooperation with artists from theatre, music and film, as well as with researchers from various disciplines.

Gisela Weimann’s particular working method is characterised by the magnetic field between her individual artistic handwriting, on the one hand, and a complex network of far-reaching actions and reactions created by her own initiatives, on the other. Some of her cooperative projects grow into existential endeavours demanding the total commitment of her personal energies. For this she has earned special encouragement.

There are two leading threads in Gisela Weimann’s life’s work: her diaries, which are conceived visually as well as narratively and which describe her continuous reflections on the relation between politics, society and personal experience. Both threads determine the specific form of her artistic references. Both include her repeated mental struggle with the powerlessness of art against war and violence. In awarding this prize, the jury wishes to emphasize that Gisela Weimann’s struggle is not outdated but as important as ever in today’s world.

(Professor Dr. Stefanie Endlich, Sigrid Nebelung, Dr. Lucie Schauer)