Stefanie Unruh: Works

How a tram shelter becomes a ballroom

In her new book, Stefanie Unruh takes stock of her work from 2000 to the present day. Carla Schulz-Hoffmann has described the core of the Munich artist's work as follows: "In large, thematically coherent work complexes, she deals with a classic question of artistic existence, her position within her respective history." Unruh thus addresses questions of identity, deals with traces and memories, with everyday actions and situations, but she places reality in a surreal light. Her examination of the myths of everyday life is strongly influenced by her interest in media phenomena. In 2005/2006, for example, Stefanie Unruh so skilfully added drawn portraits to a subtle series of floral black and white patterned wallpapers that the photographic originals only come to mind on closer inspection: Mohammed Atta and his accomplices and the famous image of the turban-wearing Ramzi Binalshibh, who is currently in Guantanamo awaiting the start of his trial for involvement in the 9/11 attacks, which has been announced for 2021, emerge from a tendril of flowers. In 2010, Stefanie Unruh once again takes up the combination of floral motifs with motifs referring to Islamism in simple yet effective ink drawings: The "uniform" burqa emerges from the lovely ornamentation, which corresponds with the Islamic ban on images, like a foreign body, and one of the women also holds a pistol in her hand. However, drawing as a recurring starting point in Stefanie Unruh's work is only one of her media skills - she works just as skilfully with objects and video installations, with which she makes her often sought-after contribution to current debates on the occupation of public spaces. In doing so, she often reverses their formal connotations: A prestigious foyer becomes a dark cave, a former tram shelter mutates into a ballroom.