‘Heute ist Morgen’ (Today is Tomorrow) is the statement artist Ulrike Rosenbach chose as the title of her current retrospective at ZKM, Karlsruhe, covering a decades-long art practice which combines elements of performance video, experimental cinema, conceptual photography and site-specific interventions. Rosenbach is a pioneer of art in which feminist and technological concerns and their relationship are addressed. The exhibition in Karlsruhe anchors her work within an art-historical context while shedding light on the distinctive features of her practice and what sets her apart from her contemporaries. Rosenbach’s work processes and actualises themes, motifs and symbols from Egyptian, Greek and Hindu mythology. Her practice also incorporates Christian iconography into concrete experiences involving active bodies in real time. It’s worth noting that her work shares a spiritual bond with the cinema of Kenneth Anger, who exploited the evocative power of images and fiction within the realm of the (private) body. The exhibition in Karlsruhe is an act of historical justice recognising the tremendous contribution of an artist who has been overlooked in recent years; however, it is also a celebration of true experimentalist who radically eschews canonization — a tension that plays out in interesting ways in this long-overdue retrospective.
