Christine Schlegel (1950) is one of those female artists who found a voice outside the artistic doctrine of the GDR and who ended up leaving the republic. In 1986, Schlegel managed to leave for the Netherlands through a sham marriage. In her work, she employs a wide variety of media and forms of expression.
In 1973, Christine Schlegel applied to study painting and graphic art at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden, from which she graduated with a diploma in 1978. Whilst still a student, encouraged by A.R. Penck, she began creating collages in which she offered a critical yet humorous commentary on the life of an artist in the GDR. Collage runs through her entire body of work. During her studies, she was able to travel abroad for the first time. As a short-term member of the Verband Bildender Künstler of the GDR, she later took part in study trips to Russia.
Many of her works, created whilst she was still in the GDR, bear witness to her desire to leave the GDR. Suitcases and doors are recurring motives.
Through personal contacts, she managed to further her education despite restricted access to literature, and to expand her body of work to include performance and film. A key source of inspiration was the dancer Fine Kwiatkowski, with whom Schlegel collaborated closely. Metaphors for travelling and leaving the country also feature in the films they produced together.
The very title of Schlegel’s 1986 book project, "Vielleicht werde ich plötzlich verschwinden" (Perhaps I Will Suddenly Disappear), alludes to her imminent departure from the GDR.
In the photographs from Karin Wieckhorst’s series "Begegnungen", which portrayed artists in their studios during the 1980s, Schlegel is shown shortly before her imminent departure. She poses nonchalantly in her East Berlin flat in front of a door that symbolises her imminent departure from the GDR.
In the interview, Christine Schlegel talks about her experiences of leaving the country and the period around and following the "Wende" in 1989/90. She had travelled via the Netherlands to West Berlin, where she moved into a studio near the border. Here, she witnessed the dismantling of the border fortifications first-hand and processed this experience artistically – as she did her memories of the GDR.
In 2001, Christine Schlegel moved back to Dresden, where she has lived and worked ever since. In one of her most recent works, she created collages and painted over old photographs she had taken in the 1970s. With this series, Schlegel continues to this day to ‘splash colour across the GDR’.
This article was produced as part of a seminar at TU Dresden, led by Prof. Kerstin Schankweiler and Laura-Maria Schulze, with the collaboration of Leonie Linke, Johanna Süß and Celina Wagenknecht.
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