Henrike Naumann

Born in Zwickau, Henrike Naumann’s installation project ‘GDR Noir. Change of shifts’ discusses her own origins and family history. When dealing with her own socialization in the former GDR and the life and artistic work of her grandfather Karl Heinz Jakob, she encountered questions of current relevance. Analyzing her grandfather’s artwork and GDR art in general – ranging from support to paternalism – she began to ask herself how we deal with the heritage of the former GDR nowadays. Naumann puts the paintings of Karl Heinz Jakob, created in private in the late 1950s and early 1960s, portraying himself, his wife or daughter, in a context with postmodern furnitures from the 1990s – furniture most living rooms in Easter Germany were decorated with since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The artist confronts us with this process of repression in an unusual way. And, by deliberately disregarding aesthetic standards, she makes it a subject of discussion at the same time. These upheavals within the German-German society are still present, even 30 years later.

Henrike Naumann lives and works in Berlin.