Courtesy Iris Fegerl

Iris Fegerl’s film powerfully tells the story of Anna Morandi Manzolini, the first woman to gain admission to the exclusively male domain of the university in the 18th century. She was the first woman to be employed as a preparator and to teach anatomy to male students at a time when such a role for a woman was unthinkable. The film offers insights into society and the intellectual climate of the Enlightenment, as well as the University of Bologna’s academic environment.

In Europe, Bologna was regarded as the centre of anatomical science. However, only men were allowed to teach and study in its anatomical theatre; women were present solely as cadavers laid bare on the dissecting table, their bodies cut open and reduced to parts by the presiding anatomist.

Anna Morandi Manzolini became the first woman to overturn this prescribed role. She dissected hundreds of bodies and translated the knowledge she gained into meticulously crafted scientific models. These works presented the human body in a new way, distinct from the traditional, pathos-laden depictions of her time.

And yet, over the centuries Morandi Manzolini fell into obscurity—not least because her works were attributed to others and she was dismissed as illiterate. She was the first female scientist to focus, through her plastic representations, on the relationship between physical constitution and sensory perception—laying a foundation for what would later become the neurosciences.

Captured by a Green Light, 2025
26 x 60,5 cm

Before the Sunrise, at the Station, 2025
28 x 33,5 cm

After the Picnic Lunch, 2025
50 x 48 cm

The Scaffold Touched the Sky, 2025
45 x 35 cm

Praying mantis, 2025
32 x 50 cm

The Unusual is happening, 2025
33,5 x 41 cm

Behind the Wall, They Witness the rise, 2024
60 x 48 cm

C-print on 120g paper, mounted on Hahnemühle 300g paper

Mourning Women, 2024
46 x 41 cm
C-print on 120g paper, mounted on 1.4 mm cardboard

Eight analogue photo collages from the series Spectators

Courtesy the artist

Nazanin Hafez (b. 1991, Shiraz, Iran) engages in her work with the personal experience of political oppression under the Iranian regime. She examines the relationship between image and repression, representation and censorship, visibility and concealment. Using both digital and analogue photography, film, and collage, she creates resistant counter-images.

For her collage series Spectators, Hafez explores the websites of Iranian and international press agencies. She collects images of public executions and responds to them through her artistic interventions. The urban architectures—sites of daily state violence—are distorted using paper collage techniques. Hafez appropriates these found materials, but extracts fragments, reshaping them into new, dystopian visions of urban agglomerations from which the human presence has been deliberately removed.

For the exhibition at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, the artist has created a second series entitled The Mountains Witness, the Stones Remember. Hafez produced this body of work during her most recent visit to Iran. The photographs were taken far from the city, which remains visible in the background. These are places where young people—particularly young women—go to experience brief moments of freedom. In breathtaking mountain landscapes, women appear with uncovered hair, striking mythic poses. The mountains have always been places of refuge and resistance—offering both escape and shelter through the terrain itself.

Nazanin Hafez has interwoven these two contrasting realities of contemporary Iran into a single spatial installation. The collages—constructed from fragments of state-controlled public imagery—demand close inspection. Behind walls, in a separate room, she presents large-format portraits of unveiled women. Entering the space requires physical submission and marks the threshold into another sphere—one that is freer, almost epic in its atmosphere.

This entrance takes the form of an urban element that carries deep political significance in Iran. Since the street protests of 2017, electricity boxes have become symbols of young women’s resistance. They stood on them like pedestals, holding their hijabs aloft like flags, giving form to their rage. The regime responded swiftly, modifying the boxes with slanted metal spikes. This altered form became a symbol in itself.

Hafez has chosen a bold stance. The collages produced for this exhibition test the limits of visual representation of state violence and the threat posed to public expression through art. Her portraits restore dignity and strength to the women depicted—refusing any gesture of submission or victimhood.

Nazanin Hafez (b. 1991, Shiraz, IR) is a visual artist living in both Iran and Germany. In 2024, she completed her diploma in Fine Arts at the Mainz Academy of Fine Arts (DE), where she is currently pursuing her master’s degree under Prof. Judith Samen. Previously, she earned her bachelor’s degree in Media Art and Design in 2022 at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar in Saarbrücken (DE). In her artistic work, Hafez critically engages with social and political injustices, particularly the effects of the repressive regime in Iran. In doing so, she employs various media, ranging from photography and collage to video and installation.

Hafez has exhibited her work at several renowned institutions, including HELLERAU – European Center for the Arts, Dresden (DE), the Museum of Applied Arts, Frankfurt am Main (DE), Montée du Château Clervaux, Luxembourg (LU), the Modern Gallery of the Saarland Museum, Saarbrücken (DE), and the Museumsquartier Osnabrück (DE). She has received several international scholarships and awards, including the Wüstenrot Foundation Fellowship for Documentary Photography, the Hellerau Dresden Residency Award, the City of Saarbrücken Grant for Emerging Artists, and the Prix de la Photographie Clervaux Luxembourg.

Video, colour, stereo, 4K

12 min

The prophet: Morten Rose

With Khashayar Zandyavari, Sara Elizabeth Egede Andersson, Thorbjørn Pihl, Loqman Ahmed, Oliver Engelmand, Sidsel Buch

Camera: John Hussain Flindt

Sound: Khashayar Zandyavari

Assistence: Line Lyhne

Colour correction: Botond Nagy

Sound mix: Leon Goltermann

Courtesy the artist

Paul Haas (b. 1992, Eilenburg, Germany) graduated from the Städelschule. His practice centres primarily on film, but also includes photography and installation. At the thematic core of his work lies a critical examination of origin and the construction of political identity. A particular focus in his recent projects has been on life in rural regions of Germany, drawing on autobiographical experiences from his youth in Northern Saxony.

Haas’s films engage with the ideologically charged visual language of recent German history. They trace its fractures and dangerous lines of continuity, revealing possible links between past and present. His references include films from the GDR, as well as a critical engagement with folkloric and nationalist nature symbols—such as the eagle or the stag—and with militarised ideals of masculinity. What interests Haas is the extent to which these images and ideals persist into the present day.

For And This is Us 2025, Haas has created a film developed during his current residency in Copenhagen. The film opens with a close-up that transitions into a long tracking shot, gradually revealing the setting. On a sunny day, a man stands in a public square with a portable speaker and microphone. The figure begins to deliver a speech, declaiming to the open air, indifferent to the people strolling across Kongens Nytorv—a central, bustling square in the Danish capital. The tone and diction of his speech evoke the presence of a prophet. He warns that he comes from the future, that it is bleak, conjuring images of war, destruction, and death—a war believed to be over, yet destined to return.

Interwoven throughout the film are brief vignettes of interpersonal conversations. But the prophet’s speech remains the central thread. Though his appearance is unremarkable, he stands apart from the passers-by, who continue unbothered, unaware. Played by Danish actor Morten Rose, the prophet remains an ambivalent figure. His speech teeters between anti-war rhetoric and a call to arms—as if it were a message foretelling the fateful repetition of history.

Haas films the protagonist from a great distance using a telephoto lens, observing him in the vast openness of the square—unnoticed, unheard. This stylistic choice, borrowed from wildlife documentary filmmaking, allows Haas to describe action from afar, reinforcing the sense of quiet estrangement.

In Haas’s work—this piece being no exception—there is often a diffuse atmosphere of constant tension. He achieves this ambivalence through the blending of documentary and fictional elements. Professional actors are deliberately cast alongside non-actors, with performances shifting between improvisation and scripted delivery.

Paul Haas (b. 1992, Eilenburg, DE) studied Fine Arts in the class of Prof. Gerard Byrne at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main (DE), graduating in 2024 as a master student. Previously, he studied Media Art at the Bauhaus University Weimar (DE). In his film and video works, Haas uses both documentary and fictional techniques.

His works have been shown in group exhibitions at the Museum of Odesa Modern Art, Odesa (UA), ACUD, Berlin (DE), and the Goethe-Institut Dublin (IE). He has had solo exhibitions at the Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden (DE) in 2020, the Ausstellungshalle 1A, Frankfurt am Main (DE) in 2023, and the 1822-Forum of the Frankfurter Sparkasse, Frankfurt am Main (DE) in 2024. In 2023, he won the Städelschule Rundgang Film Award, and in 2025, he will be an Artist in Residence at Art Hub Copenhagen (DK). Since 2025, he has been part of the HAP studio program at basis e.V. in Frankfurt am Main (DE).