The exhibition “Neue Mysterien” (New Mysteries) at GalerieETAGE / Museum Reinickendorf will present the first two recipients of the Dieter-Ruckhaberle-Förderpreis from 2019 and 2020: Luiza Prado and Annette Frick.

Prado, born in Brazil in 1988, works on multimedia installations, comprised of video, objects and text, in which she examines to what extent different techniques of control, and especially birth control, have a continued influence on the hierarchies of gender, ethnicity, social class and national affiliation as defined by the colonial era.  In her work, scientific research, artistic experimentation as well as communicative and ritual practices come into a surprising interaction, opening up spaces of resonance and criticality.

Frick, born in Germany in 1957, has been a photographic chronicler of the queer scene in Germany for decades and works with large-format black and white photographs, experimental films and self-published zines. Over the last three decades Frick has produced an impressive body of work in which she has been exploring the photographic image as a means to not only document but also to think through and perform alternative ways of living and working along the social and cultural margins.  The protagonists of Frick’s photographs and print works are the “masks of identity” of Berlin´s queer culture and its changing architecture. Her series of portraits and urban studies reflect the conflicts and changes around the politics of representation and identity within recent history, and open up spaces of poetic, performative and political imagination through engagement, complicity and proximity.

The exhibition juxtaposes these two positions and contextualizes them with material from the vast archives of artist, cultural politician and curator Dieter Ruckhaberle. Two artist books will be published on the occasion of the exhibition.

The Dieter-Ruckhaberle-Foerderpreis commemorates and honors the life and work of Dieter Ruckhaberle. Since the 1960s Ruckhaberle was a leading figure of West-Berlin’s cultural scene. He tirelessly promoted and worked towards better working conditions for artists in Germany, always convinced that artistic freedom could only be guaranteed by an absence of economic pressure. Ruckhaberle initiated the IG Medien, a union for media related professions, and the Künstlersozialkasse (KSK), a subsidized health insurance for artists. He co-founded various art institutions such as nGbK and the Staatliche Kunsthalle, as whose director he served for many years. As an artist Ruckhaberle created an extensive and multifaceted body of work, ranging between painting and sculpture, both abstract and figuratively, in search of new poetic forms and positions of critical contemporaneity. He passed away in May 2018 at his last major project: the Künstlerhof Frohnau, an artist “village” on the Northern outskirts of Berlin, which offers affordable studio spaces for artists since 1998.

The project has been supported by funds from the Berlin Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa, the Ausstellungsfonds für die Kommunalen Galerien and the Fonds Ausstellungsvergütungen Bildende Künstlerinnen und Künstler.