Courtesy of the Collection of Antiquities, Justus Liebig University Giessen

A foot, a hand, an ear—shaped from clay and entrusted to a deity more than two thousand years ago. These small, silent objects tell the stories of people who transformed their vulnerability into images. They speak of illness and of hope, of the desire for healing and of gratitude when recovery comes.

Thanks to a loan from the Collection of Antiquities of the Chair of Classical Archaeology at Justus Liebig University Giessen, the exhibition Anatomy of Fragility presents twenty-three Etruscan terracotta votives. They come from the collection of the anatomist Ludwig Stieda, who acquired them in 1899 in what is now Isola Farnese, built over the ruins of the ancient city of Veii, and who donated them in 1913 to the university’s Collection of Antiquities. Veii was an important city of Etruscan high culture, located some fifteen kilometres northwest of Rome, and was conquered by the Romans in 396 BC.

The body-part votives of the Giessen Collection of Antiquities come from the sanctuary and repository of the Pendici di Piazza d’Armi and date mainly from the late 3rd to the mid-2nd century BC. They are among the earliest surviving testimonies of a religious practice that continued across cultures for millennia.

Since this custom was so widespread, sanctuaries quickly filled up. So to make room for new offerings, repositories in the form of pits were created at the sanctuaries, in which the votives were collected.

The anatomical votives include heads, hands, feet, sexual organs and internal organs. Most of the votives were made of fired clay, a readily available and inexpensive material that was easy to work with. With the help of negative moulds, these smaller votives could be produced in series.

More elaborate were the torsos with open body cavities, some of which were individually finished by hand. By contrast, the flat viscera plates were a simplified and less costly version of the same motif.

In the exhibition Anatomy of Fragility, the Etruscan votives enter into a spatial dialogue with objects from Hans and Benedikt Hipp’s collection from Pfaffenhofen in Bavaria, whose holdings of votive offerings and associated wooden models range from the Baroque period to the post-war era.

Despite the surprisingly consistent visual representation of body parts, the uterus is an exception: in the Bavarian votives of the Hipp Collection it appears in the form of a toad, a symbolic shape that goes back to ancient ideas. The Etruscan uterus votives, by contrast, follow the actual anatomical form of the female organ. However, with one striking peculiarity: X-ray examinations of an Etruscan uterus revealed the presence of a body inside, invisible from the outside, which with high probability represents an embryo.

Hands, feet, eyes, ears and internal organs can be recognised in both collections in simplified, clear forms. The depictions of internal organs, typical for the Etruscans, were often derived from anatomical knowledge gained through the dissection of slaughtered animals. Yet the sometimes astonishing accuracy of the Etruscan votives raises the question of whether this knowledge was based solely on animal observation, or also on experiences with human bodies, for example those killed on the battlefield, or even on early operations or dissections.

Courtesy Hans and Benedikt Hipp Collection

Votives are offerings that people present to higher powers in times of need. They are prayers made tangible—petitions for healing, for protection in moments of suffering or thanks for miraculous rescue and aid. For thousands of years, this form of invoking divine power and intercession has remained almost unchanged. Even the forms of the votive gifts have changed little: they represent diseased body parts, organs or figurative situations. Votives may be paintings or three-dimensional objects. The latter are made of clay, wax, wood or metal, produced either as unique pieces or as serial objects. To this day, pilgrimage sites, sanctuaries and churches are adorned with them. And bound to each individual votive is the life story of a person, whose plea is told through the gift in the form of the votive.

The Lebzelterei (a traditional workshop producing gingerbread and devotional wax objects) on the main square in Pfaffenhofen has existed since the early 17th century. Since 1897 it has been run by the Hipp family—today in its fourth generation. Hans Hipp is one of the last wax modellers and gingerbread makers (Lebzelter) still active in Germany. He has conducted in-depth research into the history of the craft, of customs and of votives, written books on the subject and established a Lebzelter and Wax Museum for his extensive collection. Thanks to his generous loans, the exhibition Anatomy of Fragility offers unique insights into the collection—and thus into the history of human experience of physical vulnerability.

In southern Germany, votive offerings were made primarily of wax from the Baroque period onwards. In Christianity, beeswax was regarded as a sacred material: pure, incorruptible and closely linked with the symbolism of the bee, which stood for purity and innocence and embodied devout Christians. At the same time, beeswax possesses a special materiality: soft, malleable and adaptable, yet also fragile. These qualities are directly connected to the fleshly nature and vulnerability of the human body, making wax the ideal material for votive offerings.

Their production was the responsibility of the Lebzelter—a guild that, according to its statutes, was at that time the only one permitted to work with bee products. The profession of the Lebzelter included not only the baking of gingerbread and honey cakes, but also candle making and the casting of votive offerings. The artful carving of three-dimensional wooden moulds, used both for pastries and for votive objects, was then an important part of the Lebzelter’s training. Moulds are negative forms into which wax or dough is pressed to produce a raised image.

From yellow, bleached or red-dyed wax, the Lebzelter cast limbs, organs or symbolic forms. Anatomical accuracy played only a minor role, yet the shapes were familiar to people—like a visual vocabulary in times when few could write.

For internal organs, slaughtered animals often served as models, while other anatomical forms were deliberately simplified or represented symbolically. One example is a votive in the form of a toad, intended to illustrate the uterus. Popular belief at the time held that a toad sat in a woman’s belly, biting her and thereby causing menstrual pain and bleeding. This notion goes back to ancient ideas. In Greek medicine, the uterus was sometimes described as a freely moving, independent being that wandered through the body. At the same time, the toad has been regarded in many cultures as a symbol of fertility.

Most of the votive figures in the Hipp Collection were destined for the pilgrimage church of Niederscheyern (Unsere Liebe Frau, U.L.Fr.), only two kilometres away. They were laid down together with monetary offerings (the so-called Opfer in Stock) and a vow to have a mass celebrated. Ten so-called miracle books (Mirakelbücher) have been preserved in the archives of the Benedictine monastery of Scheyern, and one of them is displayed in the exhibition as a photographic reproduction. Between the late 17th century and 1803, more than 20,000 ‘vows’ were recorded. Clergymen collected oral reports from the faithful about their miraculous healings and set them down in writing. Through these records, it is possible to trace the connections between the votive offerings of the Hipp Collection and the corresponding illnesses, as well as the stories and destinies of those affected.

These records are like windows into the everyday lives of ordinary people: they tell of their faith, their worries and hopes, their ways of dealing with illness and recovery. They document a world view in which medical help often failed and healing was sought through faith. At the same time, they serve as a medical-historical compendium, providing insight into anatomical knowledge, concepts of disease, healing practices and body images of past centuries.

In the Middle Ages, medical care in rural areas was provided mainly by monasteries. Nuns and monk-physicians maintained pharmacies and herb gardens. With the Renaissance, monastic medicine lost its importance. Secular doctors—the so-called medici—were now trained at newly founded universities. At that time, however, they treated only wealthy patients, and medical care for ‘ordinary people’ was left to lay healers known as Bader. Their knowledge was not based on academic training, but on practical craft. After just two to four years of apprenticeship, one could practise this profession, while further experience had to be gained through success or failure with patients. In addition to local Bader, there were also itinerant healers who offered their services in marketplaces. They were often accompanied by fire breathers and sword swallowers who drew attention to them, while drummers, pipers and criers attempted to drown out the cries of pain from their patients.

With secularisation in 1803, the continuation of the miracle books was prohibited by the state, as they were regarded as a promotion of ‘error and superstition’.

Behind every piece of wax, however small, lies a personal destiny. Even if many figures were cast from the same mould and appear identical in form, each carries within it an individual story, a wish or an urgent hope. They are an expression of faith and trust, and at the same time, of having no other recourse to heal their pain.

Miracle books:

The miracle books of Scheyern reveal that petitioners often turned to God for help only after several unsuccessful treatments by the Bader. They purchased a votive offering from a nearby Lebzelter, endowed it with their plea, and laid it down in a pilgrimage church together with a vow to have a mass celebrated and a monetary donation (Opfer in Stock).

Helena Pfabin from Schacha had a thorn in her foot for three and a half years and could no longer walk. She also sought help from various Bader, but they were unable to remove the thorn. So she made a vow to the Holy Cross, offering a wax foot and an Opfer in Stock. Thereupon the thorn sprang out of the afflicted foot by itself, to the greatest astonishment of the suffering woman.

Book of Good Deeds, Scheyern Abbey, 1743, No. 5

Supplicant (Votive Female Figure):

Some believers had their portrait or even their entire body modelled or cast in wax. The closer the figure matched the supplicant in size and weight, the greater the symbolic—and at the same time the material—value of the votive offering. It represented the dedication of the whole person, often in the context of a comprehensive plea for healing or protection.

Anna Gräslin of Scheyern lay gravely ill, so much so that no one believed she could recover. In this most desperate danger she made a vow here, with a wax effigy and an Opfer in Stock. Thereupon her condition gradually improved, and in fact she recovered.

Miracle Book of the Niederscheyern Pilgrimage Site, Vol. 5, 1749, No. 81

Toad:

The votive in the form of a toad symbolises the uterus. In popular belief it was thought that a toad dwelt in a woman’s womb, causing pain and bleeding. By offering such a gift, women sought healing from abdominal ailments or relief from unfulfilled desire for children.

Walburga Heiflin of Unterschönbach had suffered for fourteen days from severe pains in her womb, as if bitten. She therefore made a vow with a waxen womb and carried it on her bare knees around the altar. After this vow, the illness ceased at once, without doubt through the intercession of the helper in need, St Leonard.

Miracle Book of Inchenhofen, 1592

Eyes:
Eye votives were offered in cases of injuries and diseases of the eyes, often also out of fear of blindness.

Walburg Kneißlin of Reisgang suffered from a dangerous condition of the eyes and feared she might go blind. Yet as soon as she made a vow here in offering a wax eyeball, she felt relief and regained her sight.

Miracle Book of the Niederscheyern Pilgrimage Site, Vol. 4, 1726, No. 109

Teeth:
Tooth votives and dentures were offered in cases of toothache and oral diseases. They were often intended to bring relief or to protect against further suffering.

Maria Renkhl suffered from severe toothache for a full 24 days. She made a vow here with a holy rosary and a wax set of teeth, whereupon the pain soon subsided.

Miracle Book of the Niederscheyern Pilgrimage Site, Vol. 5, 1747, No. 28

Ears:
Ear votives were offered in cases of earache, hearing loss or deafness. They were intended to bring healing and the return of hearing.

Rosina Kiefflin, unmarried, from Pfaffenhofen, suffered from a severe defect of hearing, so that for five weeks she could hear neither speech nor bells. She sought help from Our Lady here, vowing to pray three rosaries and to make an offering. She immediately perceived an improvement.

Miracle Book of the Niederscheyern Pilgrimage Site, Vol. 2, 1706, No. 101

Arms, Legs and Hands:

Moulds for casting arms, hands and legs belonged to the standard repertoire of every Lebzelter. Hardly any pilgrimage church could do without these votive offerings: they were given in cases of injury, paralysis or serious illness and were often laid down in large numbers together with crutches and bandages—as petitions for healing or as thanks for recovery.

A child from Pfaffenhofen had such a severe condition of the finger that a Bader treated it for three-quarters of a year, but to no avail. It was even thought that the child’s finger would have to be amputated. In this distress the parents finally placed their only hope, next to God, in the image of grace here, and vowed the child with a holy mass and an Opfer in Stock. Immediately all danger disappeared, and the finger was healed.

Miracle Book of the Niederscheyern Pilgrimage Site, Vol. 2, 1705, No. 53

Wolfgang Krebs, a soldier, was severely wounded in the right hand and lay bleeding for four hours, unable to help himself, and with no one else coming to his aid. As a result, his injured hand became completely paralysed, so much so that for five months he could not move it or hold the slightest thing. But when, after these five months, he passed by this house of God as a discharged soldier and heard many people speak of this image of grace, he made a vow with a wax hand and a Kreuzer (a small coin) in the Opfer in Stock. Thereupon he was immediately able to move his hand again and use it at will.

Miracle Book of the Niederscheyern Pilgrimage Site, Vol. 2, 1702, No. 13

Torsos:
A wax torso was usually offered in cases of pain in the chest or abdominal area, or in diseases of the internal organs. Since self-diagnosis was often difficult with the wide variety of pains in the upper body and abdomen, it was easier for the sick to symbolically locate all their complaints in this region and to express them in the form of a wax torso.

A certain person was in great fear because of a swelling on the chest, worrying it might turn to cancer. To avert such misfortune, they vowed a holy mass and a wax offering, and were thereby freed from further harm with great consolation.

Miracle Book of the Niederscheyern Pilgrimage Site, Vol. 4, 1726, No. 223

Knives, stabbing pains:
All stabbing pains, especially those in the chest and abdominal area, were indicated by a wax stabbing knife. Pains of the heart, lungs or side were among the most frequent reasons for such votive offerings.

Maria Winderin of Eidenbach was suddenly seized at night by a painful stabbing in the heart, so that she could neither move nor bend. In this pain she made a vow here with a wax stabbing knife, a Saturday devotion, and an Opfer in Stock. Upon this prayer the stabbing pain in her side ceased immediately.

Miracle Book of the Niederscheyern Pilgrimage Site, Vol. 5, 1748, No. 32

Lungs:
Lung votives were offered for diseases of the respiratory tract and neighbouring organs, often also for tuberculosis, which at that time was called ‘consumption’ or ‘lung disease’.

Catharina Kneißlin of Pfaffenhofen was so severely afflicted with coughing that she spat blood. But as soon as her mother made a vow that the daughter should come here on three consecutive Saturdays, and also offer a wax figure, she immediately began to recover.

Miracle Book of the Niederscheyern Pilgrimage Site, Vol. 2, 1703, No. 21

Throat:
Votives in the form of a throat or gullet were offered for illnesses in the throat area, such as inflammations, ulcers or breathing difficulties.

Magdalena Moserin of Säzlhof suffered from a dangerous condition of the throat. There was no doctor experienced enough to help her. She declared that Our Lady of Niederscheyern alone was her best helper and physician.

Miracle Book of the Niederscheyern Pilgrimage Site, Vol. 4, 1725, No. 83

Courtesy Lawrence Malstaf / Tallieu Art Office

Lawrence Malstaf is known for his interdisciplinary artworks, which move freely between visual art, installation, dance and theatre. His work deals with the human body and its possibilities of perception and explores physical and psychological boundaries. Breath is the starting point for the staging of Shrink 01995, which was originally created as a six-hour performative installation. Malstaf performed it himself. He later extended the work to include visitors, who were also able to experience this intense work.

Two large, transparent foils are stretched across a framed structure. The person presses their body into the space between them. Wrapped in this skin, he or she holds two tubes. One removes air, one supplies air. One creates a vacuum between the foils so that the body floats in a compressed state, while the other allows the body to breathe. For the duration of the performance, the person inside moves slowly and changes positions, and it is they themselves who regulate the air supply. There is no danger for the participants. However, they are faced with the challenge of having to overcome their own psychological expectation that the process might be difficult and dangerous. And they need to consciously change the way they control their own physicality. Breathing must find a new rhythm.

A breath is at the beginning and end of every life. We are constantly inhaling and exhaling into the world, that is the basic way of relating to it. The breath can stagnate or flow. The interplay between breathing and mental states is known in all ancient civilisations. Pranayama originated in India as a technique of breathing exercises for meditation and controlling thoughts.

The designed arrangement of the work shuts out sight and hearing and instead intensifies the perception of touch and pressure on the entire surface of the body. The senses are directed inwards, an increased concentration on the inside of the body sets in—the beating of the heart, the rushing of blood and the rhythm of breathing. A profound experience of space and physicality, isolation and limitation, as well as peace and protection opens up. The installation reflects the adaptability of the human mind and creates an intense reflection on the duality of fragility and resilience under extreme conditions.

Malstaf is looking for an experience that throws people back to the realm of the existential. He himself has lived for years in the seclusion of Norwegian nature. Silence, vastness and the forces of nature are fundamental experiences that he considers essential for a sense of the natural.

The participants in the experience assume new poses at regular intervals. In moments of immobility, they almost look like paintings or still lifes. Depending on how you look at them, the experience may appear terrifying or peaceful. The three-dimensional state of suspension can give rise to countless associations: from nature morte in the sense of bodies exhibited as goods or products, to the state before birth and weightlessness in the womb. Malstaf’s art is not intended to tell a story. He does not create pictorial metaphors. He creates spaces that make it possible to experience primal forces.

Over the summer, the Frankfurter Kunstverein launched an open call for people from very different areas and backgrounds to be part of Malstaf’s work. The artist prepared the participants for the experience in several sessions. They experience Shrink 01995 from a personal perspective, acting not only as observers of the artwork but also as co-creators, exploring the limits of their physical and sensory perception and bringing the artist’s work to life on an intense level.

Lawrence Malstaf (b. 1972, Bruges, BE) lives and works between Tromsø (NO) and Oudenaarde (BE). Malstaf’s art moves between visual art and theater. He is known for his sensory installations that explore space and orientation, engaging visitors as co-actors. Since graduating in industrial design from the Henry van de Velde Institute in Antwerp (BE) in 1995, he has worked both as an artist and as an innovative set designer in the international dance and theater scene. His performance Shrink alone has been shown over fifty times worldwide. Malstaf’s works have been exhibited in significant institutions such as the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Le Havre (FR), the IOMA Art Center, Beijing (CN), the CCBB – Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo (BR), the Centre Pompidou, Paris (FR), the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg (DE), the Trondheim Kunstmuseum (NO), Bozar, Brussels (BE), FACT, Liverpool (UK), Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, New York (US), and Z33, Hasselt (BE), as well as at numerous festivals. He has received several international awards in the fields of art and new technologies, including the Golden Nica at Ars Electronica in Linz (AT) and the Excellence Prize at the Japan Media Arts Festival in Tokyo (JP).

Pink sexy gym boot camp, 2024
Paper Cut, Photo cardboard
265 x 295 cm

Ohne Titel, 2024
Paper Cut, Photo cardboard
680 cm / ⌀ 47 cm

INSTAREXIE, 2024
Ceiling installation of 240 paper cuts, photo cardboard, color foil
je 68 x 68 cm

Courtesy the artist

Sonja Yakovleva has been perfecting the art of paper cutting for more than ten years, transferring this historical medium into the very present. She lives with intensity and, at the same time, is a chronicler of the present. Her view of the world, of people and of everyday culture is precise and lustful, noticing and collecting patterns of human behaviour that she captures in her drawings and condenses in her silhouettes. Her art is full-bodied and life-affirming — the contribution of an “embedded artist” — and she gives an independent account of contemporary pop culture, for which she immerses herself into current events.

For this exhibition at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, Sonja Yakovleva has focussed her attention and her extensive research on new areas. All the works in the exhibition have been newly created and developed as a monographic presentation across three rooms. It is the power of the body that the artist examines: on the one hand, the body as a mouldable material for the self-presentation on social media and, on the other, the body of those who go on strike in urban spaces.

Yakovleva opens the exhibition with oversized figures from the cult of the body that is so prevalent in the world of fitness: Gym bro und Pink sexy gym boot camp. These two silhouettes, one male and one female, strike a muscle flexing pose — bodies from the CrossFit world — bigger than life, muscular, strong and sculpted.

Sonja Yakovleva creates her motifs somewhere between documentary and fiction, between her own practice, extensive research in the studio, Instagram fitness feeds and prompted fantasies, which she then condenses into her papercuts. She sifts through digital imagery in the various echo bubbles of online culture and filters out images that she uses as material. Her instinct for iconographic elements and cultural symbols that characterise our times is unmistakable.

Self-optimisation and self-presentation of the body have always been human endeavours. In online culture, beauty filters have shifted beauty ideals by exaggerating individual features in such a way that people adapt their real bodies to their digital image, giving rise to a zeitgeist phenomenon: Snapchat dysmorphia.

In the world of fitness, everyone becomes a sculptor and image producer of their own body and its depiction. In Germany alone, gym memberships are growing by 10% per year. And currently, revenues of more than 5.44 billion euros have been generated for the industry by more than 11 million people.

Sonja Yakovleva’s work celebrates physicality from the very beginning. The contrast between highly contemporary motifs and historical techniques, which she has been perfecting for years, is her recognisable trademark. And she manages to translate images from fast-moving online culture into meticulous, handmade papercuts that are extremely time-consuming and labour-intensive.

In INSTAREXIE Yakovleva is creating her silhouette work as a ceiling installation for the first time. Six pictorial surfaces with a total of 240 tiles make up the monumental motif, with each one individually drawn, rescaled, transferred and cut out. A complex composition of contours and internal cuts. In this new, expansive installation, the central element is the body: the material of the optimised self. The ceiling areas display self-contained worlds of fitness with differentiated community aesthetics — Barry’s Bootcamp, Urban Heroes, Pilates Fused and countless more — boutique gyms that become themed stages. Here, people take to the stage and perform work on their own bodies, always under the watchful eye of others. The large mirrors, transparent glass facades and omnipresent mobile phone cameras not only serve as perfect settings for presenting the body, but they also serve as a means of self-control, comparison, motivation and competition. Everyone wants to showcase their own physical power and gain recognition for it, in a world where appearance is moulded by performance. Tell me which world of fitness you belong to and I’ll tell you who you are.

Yakovleva explicitly emphasises the institution-like character of fitness studios. In this multi-optional society, the human body is quantified, measured and monitored, and the wearable fitness watch is always measuring. The physique is not to be taken for granted, but is the result of willpower, discipline and labour.

The result is a neoliberal field of tension between voluntarism and submission, where performance requirements and conformity to an ideal image are internalised and exert power. The gym becomes a body factory: bodies are optimised, efficiency is increased, flexibility is a guiding principle, and strictness and toughness towards one’s own stamina are virtues. Working against your own limits is the overarching motto.

Sonja Yakovleva’s work reveals that every body bears traces of its social background and that the power relations of society are reflected in it. The frequency of visits to the gym is a status symbol, as is the choice of club. People go there every day, before and after work, especially in well-paid jobs where physical labour is no longer performed — so working out is a must. And statistics from 2017 show that Frankfurt is the city with the highest proportion of active gym-goers, especially in the premium segment.

Yakovleva practises boxing herself at Ibra Boxing in Frankfurt, and for this exhibition, she has tried out new forms of fitness to excess, capturing the essence of her observations in the silhouette paintings. Ass Ass Ass is a dominant element — the female ass as an icon. Brazilian butt lifting has become the most practised procedure worldwide. It epitomises the male gaze and its objectification of the female body and, at the same time, symbolises neoliberal postfeminism — autonomous, free to make decisions and entrepreneurial. Yakovleva’s works are provocative in that her images quote sexist representations, but were created in an attitude of liberated empowerment. The self-optimisation of the body in fitness culture is hard work; working in your free time, following some inner imperative, promises social recognition and participation through the perfect body.

Yakovleva’s monumental visual worlds condense and compress, quote and caricature her observations, as she looks at the new generation of believers celebrating the collective rituals of a fitness cult with humour and irony. She portrays the places where bodywork is practised fanatically and where performance is quantified by coaches, headset commands and precise intervals. Or she focuses on the stretchability of the ideal body in minimalistic Pilates worlds with smoothies and food bowls. Yakovleva’s gaze is unsparing and sensual at the same time; however, she never places herself above her figures, but gets fully involved with them.

Courtesy the artist

In Sonja Yakovleva’s new works, specially created for this exhibition, the overarching motif is the representation of an abstract power that governs bodies and is embedded in them.

In State of Strike, the city itself is a body whose vital functions are maintained by various organs, and the blood in its veins are the workers who supply the living organism. Sonja Yakovleva depicts these people crowded together in the streets as they go on strike, utilising their bodies in public space. But pigs from industrial fattening farms are also freed and become part of the resistance against the exploitation of their bodies.

Yakovleva has created a mural over 10.5 metres long. It depicts a city in which e-commerce, the meat industry, delivery services, day-care centres, hospitals, construction sites, industrial cleaners and restaurants have been condensed into a very small space. She also deliberately incorporates recognisable Frankfurt buildings into her composition — the Alte Oper, the central railway station, the facades of brothels and the Sudfass-Beine. Some of the motifs were photographed by the artist in Frankfurt, and others come from online stock photography providers or Instagram. In the images’ composition, various locations in the post-industrial city, which are otherwise marginalised or made invisible, are placed at the centre.

The city is depicted here as a symbol of the modern age and society at large, with all the buildings representing different production sites. We see a dense flow of bodies going on strike. Yakovleva is driven by the contradictions of an increasingly flexible and yet insecure work environment. People, especially those with migrant backgrounds, are often forced to take on difficult jobs — characterised by poor working conditions. In her depiction, she shows us a city of delivery drivers, temporary workers, cleaners and meat industry employees. What would happen if not only the unionised workers, but they too were to go on strike? Would everything come to a halt? Who are all these people who keep the pulsating system of a city and a state functioning? In her mural, Yakovleva takes a close look at migrant workers and has them populate the city streets with their bodies. The artist also includes animals in the strike, because they too have lost self-determination over their bodies.

Through her thematic focus on the migrant strike of precariously employed workers, Yakovleva succeeds in raising the question of the relationship between body and politics in two different ways. On the one hand, how are workers’ bodies controlled and exploited in today’s precarious labour conditions? And on the other hand, how can these bodies become a new force by going on strike and opposing precisely this control and exploitation? And by going on strike, demands for solidarity and new forms of social organisation are brought to the streets by these protesting bodies.

Yakovleva’s working process is characterised by montage and collage, collecting and assembling. For Germany, 2023 and 2024 have been the years of nationwide waves of strikes. Not only for higher wages, but also for the implementation of climate protection measures. So for State of Strike, a variety of elements have been incorporated into the monumental mural: research into historical sources and literature on migrant strikes in the 1970s and the working conditions of precarious workers since the post-war period, interviews with e-commerce workers, the publication of the investigative collective “correctiv” in early 2024 and the remigration plans of right-wing networks. Through the social mobilisation against racism that soon followed, Yakovleva thought about a migrant strike as a means of protest against racist tendencies in society. During her research, she sifted out scenes and stories, contradictions and patterns from her own world of experience, which she incorporated into the themes of labour and strikes. She visualises the strike of migrants and workers, who represent a large part of the working class, and sets her monumental work of art against the fast-moving flow of information in the media.

For this new mural, Yakovleva quotes the visual language of various forms of propaganda art: the agit prop of the 1920s in Soviet Russia, the murales (wall paintings) of Mexico’s Diego Rivera and even street art. She uses isometric perspective, in which the image has no single vanishing point and in which the edges of components are drawn in abbreviated form. And through the use of collage and condensing visual elements, she depicts different scenes simultaneously , using geometric forms and the symbolism of colours —black, white and red.

This is the first time that Yakovleva has combined her characteristic technique of paper cutting with drawing. In her practice, the drawing is the central starting point for design and image composition, but it is lost in the act of cutting. Her pictures are created as drawings, which the artist rescales with the help of a grid      and transfers to larger paper. In State of Strike, we see her painting skills, her mastery of lines, shapes and shading, her ability to observe and reproduce the world around her, her love of experimentation and her craftsmanship. Sonja’s drawings and papercuts thrive on the flattening of motifs and stage like perspective. Her style can be associated with the phenomenon of superflat, an artistic style that reacts to consumer culture in postmodern painting.

Yakovleva says of her choice of papercutting that she likes the cross-references to historical development. From the 17th century onwards, the papercut became popular in Europe as a time-saving and cost-effective substitute for portrait painting. And whilst painting was reserved for the aristocracy, the lower classes could have silhouettes made from the outline of a profile, which were offered by street artists.

In her work State of Strike, Sonja Yakovleva combines references to an artistic technique with socio-political questions — regarding the possible outcomes of going on strike, through which the invisibility of these precarious and often migrant forms of labour becomes visible. There is a sense of solidarity among the workers who go on strike, which provides strength to build alternative ways of living and working. These bodies, that otherwise work, deliver, pack, transport or wash up, become visible through the movement on the street.They become resistant bodies that withdraw their physical strength from exploitation, and instead, bundle it in the collective in order to protest against their exploitation and bring about change.

Video installation
Five videos 7:04 min, 3:44 min, 6:15 min, 4:21 min, 11:00 min
Wood, MDF, cardboard, paper and 5 screens
3 x 3 x 3 m

Sculpture
Metal
92 x 68 x 210 cm

Courtesy the artist

The body is a material unit with which the individual inhabits time in the here and now. But what constitutes our existence? What is the irreducible essence of human existence? What is humanity when it’s no longer governed by its self-created structures of order?

For her new exhibition, Gintarė Sokelytė has constructed a self-contained universe. She transports the viewer away from their familiar sense of perception and releases them into a constructed parallel world. Like through a rabbit hole, the space can only be entered via the elevator. The door opens, and we find ourselves in a prehistoric cave. Sokelytė has painstakingly recreated part of the Blombos Cave in South Africa, using scientific 3D models. Blombos is the oldest Stone Age site where evidence of human creativity and culture has been discovered. Stone engravings depicting intersecting lines, painted with ochre, and numerous artefacts testify to the fact that 71,000 years ago Homo sapiens thought in abstract terms. They had to possess the ability to imagine, synthesise and visualise things. And the result was their rock art—the few traces left of human beings from ancient times, and evidence of their need to create images and symbols that bear witness to rich inner worlds.

These first traces of human art, the first visual language of early humans, are what Gintarė Sokelytė picks up on. Through her multimedia installation entitled * (Asterisk), which faces the cave, the primal symbol of prehistoric rock art inspired her to create her metal sculpture. Sokelytė welded it to the size of a human body—this recurring symbol of humanity, found from the Blombos Cave to the digital world. She then tied five people, five volunteers, to the metal star by their arms and legs. Bound to this cruciform sculpture, she then interrogated them about fear, power and order. How do you describe fear? What are you most afraid of? What if this happens? What is power? Who is allowed to wield power? Describe your understanding of order. How do you feel when reality slips away from you? What forces make you feel powerless?

These five people were interrogated through constant, cyclical repetition, each speaking in their respective native language and allowing their bodies to be subjected to external coercion. Exposed to the lens of the camera, their bodies began to ache from the gravitational force exerted on them. They surrendered to the influence of this external force until, in a transcendent state of essentiality, they gained deeper insight into their own perception of society and the self.

The result is five films forming part of a large geometric sculpture—a dodecahedron, a geometric construction with twelve equal faces and thirty equal edges. The viewer may enter the structure, brightly lit from the five monitors, and listen to the five volunteers as they question their innermost selves on notions of fear, power and order. In geometry, the dodecahedron is one of the five Platonic solids. Plato assigned them to his worldview as fundamental geometric figures, and their significance remains fundamental to mathematics and science today. Due to its perfect symmetry, the dodecahedron is considered the most sacred of the five Platonic solids, and the golden ratio is found repeatedly within it. In Plato’s time, it was even forbidden for people to speak about the figure. It symbolised the soul of the world (the ether) and the universe, and its twelve faces draw a connection to a number that holds special significance for human systems: the twelve zodiac signs, the number of months or hours within units of time, all the way up to the twelve apostles. For Gintarė Sokelytė, the dodecahedron forms a conceptual counterpoint to the primordial nature of the cave.

Its interior is lined with numerous copies of texts, which Sokelytė has researched and printed, from ancient to modern codices. Nearly two hundred international state constitutions and around forty collection of laws, from prehistory to the present, have been arranged chronologically and mostly in their original national languages. For the artist, they represent humanity’s struggle for structure. Laws are both protection and restriction, defining a transition in human history towards a normative order for communal life. Sokelytė explores a timeless urge with which one resists the uncertain through order and form.

25, 2024
Wall sculpture
Styrofoam, iron wire, metal, various plastics and engine oil
5 x 1,8 m

Courtesy the artist

A-Type Complex is the title of the igloo-like hemisphere woven from salvaged, rusty construction grids. Inside is a display of human figures, either upright or sitting down, and neither female nor male; not individuals as such, but rather forms of human existence. Their bodies are open, raw and permeable, reminiscent of survivors of a catastrophe. Gintarė Sokelytė creates them out of plaster, malleable and porous at the same time, then paints them with burnt engine oil. The mineral oil is viscous and toxic, and yet, at the same time, it is the fluid that kept the engine of the industrial age running.

The floor is covered with coal from which the human figures rise up, their bodies hollowed, ravaged and reduced, as if by fire, to their essential form. And beneath them there is a monitor screen. Time holds a special significance in Sokelytė’s work. It continues to tick relentlessly, and yet repeatedly returns to a starting point. This special significance is exemplified by her fascination with George Woodcock’s book The Tyranny of the Clock. Time, rhythm and measurement are seen as distinguishing features between early societies and people in the modern era — time as a structure and order that determines the life and experience of individuals. Above the lattice igloo-like structure hangs a mirror, doubling its hemispherical shape, and the memory of an hourglass is suggested in the reflection. Time and transience, the past and the ever recurring, seen as eternal principles of all life.

The final part of the grand installation consists of a 5-metre-long wall sculpture. The black, three-dimensional work, entitled 25, is a dense formation of architecture, geometric structures, ruins of grids and stone and a flow of people winding through the construction. The work resembles a medieval altarpiece in its compression and superimposition — abstract yet concrete. Gintarė Sokelytė built it out of found materials, materials that the city itself produces, uses and leaves behind.

The artist attributes strong narrative value to each of her materials. Thus, the wall painting, like the human figures, is not painted with colour paint but blackened by the layered application of burnt engine oil. This toxic substance is a residual waste of industrial production — from engine combustion — a lubricating non-biodegradable oil that sticks to people’s skin. Coal is also an intensely associative material for the artist. The material encompasses time itself — from the primeval age of its geological formation for over 350 million years. It was the catalyst for human energy production from ancient times to industrialisation in the age of machines, and then as a raw material and force behind toxic environmental impacts.

How does the past affect the present? How is the future already embedded in the present? For this exhibition at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, Gintarė Sokelytė has created a stunning and monumental world. Her pictorial spaces are experiential universes that trigger associations and know how to strike the viewer at the very core of their emotional depths. She thinks in images and works with her own references. Like Aby Warburg, she compiles her picture atlas — her Mnemosyne Atlas — from which she feeds her grand installations.

She is a seeker who strives to gain knowledge, to establish connections, to explore what holds the world, humanity and the eternity of time together at its core.

For The Bots, Eva & Franco Mattes collaborated with investigative journalist Adrian Chen and actors and actresses Irina Cocimarov, Jesse Hoffman, Jake Levy, Alexandra Marzella, Ruby McCollister, and Bobbi Salvör Menuez. They present anonymous testimonies from content moderators who have worked for Facebook in Berlin. Six videos have been created. In the room, visitors observe raised tabletops that form a minimalist installation. These tabletops are a reference to the furniture found in the Berlin moderation centre where the interviewees worked. The videos become visible to viewers only when they step behind the erected barrier and look behind the surface of the work.

What do we know about the mechanisms and regulations of social media channels that we use daily? Which contents remain visible and which are filtered out? And are there clear guidelines according to which content is deleted?

The films were executed with the typical aesthetic and features of online make-up tutorials. The statements in the films are derived from investigative research and interviews conducted with numerous witnesses employed as service providers for Facebook. The films were interpreted by actors so as to anonymise the statements of the content moderators. They perform the role of influencers addressing their followers directly. They recorded the videos using smartphones, for which reason the images are in portrait format. Advice on make-up products alternates with distressing descriptions of moderators’ work.

Content on social media channels is subject to restrictions and is thus scrutinised and monitored. Platforms claim to regulate their content through community guidelines. Some channels like Telegram also allow uncensored and problematic content. The guidelines cannot prevent thousands of ‘prohibited’ content from being posted online daily, however: violence, sexual assaults, hate speech, terrorism and pornography are just some of the categories of unwanted content on social media. Most of this content we cannot see, as it is deleted beforehand. This critical review is always carried out by human beings, i.e. it is not an automated cleansing process performed by algorithms. While programs filter content that appears to violate the guidelines of the respective platform, they cannot usually provide an independent interpretation of a post’s specific context.

In their work The Bots, Eva & Franco Mattes explicitly draw attention to the fact that critical content is seen and processed in large quantities by individuals. They are not bots, nor programs, but humans. They are called ‘content moderators’, and their profession falls within the category of ‘unregulated’ jobs that have emerged with the rise of tech companies (e.g. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk).

In the case of crowd-sourced job placement, content moderators often do not know themselves which companies they are working for. They are employed by so-called contractors who broker between tech giants like Google, Meta, YouTube, Twitter and the employees. In this way, the anonymity of the companies is preserved, their legal responsibility minimised and protected by non-disclosure agreements. Working conditions are neither publicly debated nor politically regulated. Services are governed by temporary employment contracts and are minimally paid.

Thanks to investigative journalism, reports on misconduct have nevertheless repeatedly reached the public domain in recent years. Journalist Adrian Chen was the first to shed light on the topic with his 2014 article in Wired titled ‘The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed’. Eva & Franco Mattes have been collaborating with Chen for years.

One of the main problems is that content moderators have to review thousands of posts daily before deleting them. Beheadings, child pornography, explicit violence of all kinds, fanatical hate speeches, and many other expressions of the depths of human depravity, as well as the sheer flood of banal uploads, leave in their wake trauma and profound disturbance in people.

While guidelines exist on the classification of objectionable content, these are not made public and must be kept secret by content moderators. The regulations are subject to daily changes. In order to quantify the moderators’ performance, a minimum deletion rate of 95% of the contributions must be achieved, otherwise the employee is sacked. According to anonymous statements made by employees, workers are monitored and under intense pressure to perform.

In many cultures, the rules are adapted to fit the locally prevailing conception of morality. Also, content moderation is often carried out by workers in the Global South, Asia and former colonies. The reason for this, apart from unregulated labour law, is a command of Western languages and an awareness of Western moral sensibilities.

However, even moderators are not objective filters. Despite guidelines, the process is subjective, influenced by individual interpretations. Content is removed, for example, when it is deemed politically or ideologically inappropriate. One’s own political leanings can potentially influence moderation decisions.

Through their choice of aesthetic, Eva & Franco Mattes create a deliberately jolting break with the content. They employ the staging of make-up tutorials for their artistic work. Political content is camouflaged to avoid censorship. This approach derives from activists who use this method to bring political messages and human rights violations in autocratic states to the public’s attention. It was the young TikTok user and activist Feroza Azis who filmed herself putting on make-up a few years ago in order to circumvent the censorship of the Chinese government. This enabled her to speak freely about the systematic repression and surveillance of Uyghurs in northwest China before she was blocked from the platform.

At the same time, make-up as a subject is to be understood symbolically. As the artists themselves say: ‘Make-up is a way of concealing imperfections in our faces, not much different from content moderation, which beautifies the surface of the internet by removing unwanted content.’

BEFNOED is the title of an ongoing series of videos that Eva & Franco Mattes have been producing since 2013. These short films are published online, on obscure, peripheral or forgotten social networks around the world, in Cambodia, Russia, China or Pakistan, without comment and without reference to any art project: places where the works are meant to be found almost by chance.

The videos show people carrying out seemingly meaningless actions that they have received as instructions from the artistic duo. Eva & Franco Mattes have hired these performers anonymously via online marketplaces for digital services, so-called crowdsourcing platforms. The people film themselves without knowing who the instructions come from, which audience the films are intended for or what goals are to be pursued with them. Different workers interpret the same performance with slight variations: a military salute with a bucket on one’s head, standing on a ladder, licking a car rim, two people connecting their heads through a tube.

For the exhibition, these films are spatially staged in such a way that the viewers, if they want to see the works, also have to perform a physical act that contradicts behaviour normally found in museum spaces.

The visitors have to lie on the floor under a monitor tent or lift each other up in order to look at one of the monitors that points to the ceiling above their heads. If they wish to see the images, they are obliged to squeeze between the monitor and the wall. This creates a physical interaction with the artwork that reveals a correlation between the unaware performers on the net and the unaware performers in the room. In the same way that the digitally recruited workers bow to a request from the artists, so too the visitors must adapt their behaviour to the artwork. Both actions, the digital and the analogue, celebrate absurdity, which at some points can bring to mind Erwin Wurm’s Living Sculptures. ‘We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us’ (Marshall McLuhan). The repetition of externally determined actions online is a highly common and successful practice, upon which the platform TikTok, for example, has built an entire business model.

As with numerous other works by the artistic duo, BEFNOED also works with irony, whereby the user’s behaviour in front of and behind the screen is humorously caricatured.

Eva & Franco Mattes address the mechanisms of labour in the digital world, which trade workforce as a commodity on an internationally digital labour market. The title BEFNOED is an acronym for ‘By everyone, for no one, every day’. Thus, the central question in this video series concerns gig workers, the people in the crowdsourcing economy, their work, authorship and individuality. Someone on the other side of the screen is fulfilling our requests, whether they be clicks, likes, online shopping. An action that seems immaterial to us has a direct impact on someone’s work on the other side of the world.

Crowdsourcing platforms function as anonymous marketplaces for employees and employers looking for short-term jobs for HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks). This concerns all services that can be outsourced online and are summarised by the term ‘human as a service’.

So-called contractors are often interposed between the employee and the employer for the purpose of ensuring the latter anonymity. The advantage of this work model is that it represents a quick and easy way to earn money flexibly. The disadvantage is the risk that workers’ rights and non-wage labour costs are circumvented. As a Facebook content moderator aptly describes in Eva & Franco Mattes’ work The Bots, it creates ‘a digital proletariat and a digital factory that produces no concrete products and is driven by profit alone’.

The first crowdsourcing platform for micro-labour (gigs), Mechanical Turk, was set up by Amazon in 2005. This marked the beginning of an increasingly deregulated labour market or labour pool. Mechanical Turk is the best-known and largest example of a platform where micro-tasks that cannot (yet) be performed using computing power are commissioned at low cost. There is a sense that this is a transitional period in which humans are still doing these kinds of jobs until they are taken over by algorithms. An important point is that it is still much more profitable to exploit low-paid human labour than to pay engineers to develop software. According to estimates, the turks’ average wage is around 2 dollars per hour. The micro work offered is often remunerated with credits on Amazon accounts – thus representing a double profit for the platform. Mechanical Turk was followed by numerous other crowdsourcing platforms such as Clickworker or Appjobber.

The original Mechanical Turk (1770) was a seemingly ground-breaking invention: a chess playing machine commissioned by Empress Maria Theresa of Austria in the early days of the Industrial Revolution. Externally, it resembled the other automata of the time. The machine could imitate the movements of a human playing chess, but a person was hiding inside it. For almost a century, the trick led viewers to believe that a machine could play chess. So the name of the Mechanical Turk platform is intended to suggest something that feels like a machine but has humans behind it. Humans work to fill the gaps of algorithms while training the latter to do a better job in future. For this reason, their work serving algorithms is less and less considered actual work and takes place invisibly in the background. The work BEFNOED provides visibility to these otherwise invisible workers, allowing them to engage in creative actions that are sometimes humorous and occasionally even poetic.

Sezione A#01, 2013
Drawing with Copic Multiliner SP 0.03, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.25, 0.3, 0.35, 0.5, 0.7 black pens on Fabriano Accademia Drawing Paper 200gsm
250 x 150 cm

Sezione Doppia B#01, 2020
Drawing with Copic Multiliner SP 0.03, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.25, 0.3, 0.35, 0.5, 0.7 black pens, Copic Marker, Copic Wide, Copic Sketch colors 100 Black and 110 Spezial Black on Fabriano Accademia Drawing Paper 200gsm
300 x 260 cm (2 pieces)

Sezione B#03, 2020
Sezione B#04, 2020
Sezione B#02, 2020
Drawings with Copic Multiliner SP 0.03, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.25, 0.3, 0.35, 0.5, 0.7 black pens, Copic Marker, Copic Wide, Copic Sketch colors 100 Black and 110 Special Black on Fabriano Accademia Drawing Paper 200gsm
250 x 150 cm

Courtesy the artist and Galleria D406 disegno contemporaneo, Modena

Pòst #01, 2020
Drawing with Molotow Blackliner 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.7, 0.9 and 1.0 mm black pens, Liquitex Acrylic Gouache on Fabriano Artistico Drawing Paper 640 gsm
140 x 140 cm

(on the wall)
Studi erosioni (gessi), 1999 – 2000
Parassiti, 2011 – 2012
CX, 2013 – 2016
(in the showcases)
Ciambelle, 2013 – 2015
Architetture utopiche, 2019 – fortlaufend
Drawings with Sakura Pigma Micron 005, 01, 02, 03, 05, 08 and brush black pens on Moleskine Japanese Pocket Album
9 x 279 x 1 cm; closed 9 x 14 x 1 cm

Courtesy the artist

Nicola Toffolini has been studying texts on botany, philosophy of science, science fiction and Renaissance prints for two decades. Toffolini transforms his research and knowledge into the medium of drawing and multimedia objects.

At the Frankfurter Kunstverein, the selection of works focuses on his graphic oeuvre in the form of the overall installation, which consists of eight drawing panels. At the very edge of the picture, the grass sward with the first layers of soil can still be seen, drawn in a reduced naturalistic style. But his central pictorial motif is the space that eludes the human eye, below the surface of the earth. With the finest ink pens and black copymarkers, Toffolini draws plants and soil cross-sections with the precision of a botanist or technician. The stylised mappings not only depict a controlled nature, but they also have inscribed in them the temporal dimension of the manual drawing process.

The panels correspond to the size of a human body. The initially blank paper surface is altered by the artist with utensils used by technical draughtsmen for few and precise lines. Toffolini, on the other hand, covers square meters of surface with an almost obsessive execution of thin strokes until the space is completely filled or blackened.

This practice reminds of the art form of calligraphy, which sharpens one’s own perception and method of movement in meticulous preparation, as a physical acting out of controlled placed gestures in search of inner peace.

Drawing thus becomes a physical act of thought and introspection, a bodily translation of thought, a physical act that focuses the mind in a concentrated direction.

On the one hand formally structured and consistent beyond measure, and on the other free in his association, Toffolini no longer adheres to the rules of real conditions, but deconstructs and recombines until imagined systems emerge. The pictorial worlds are composed of natural elements and technical structures. The control Toffolini exercises over his motifs reflects human intervention in the landscape. He constructs artificial worlds that seem uncanny in their manipulation.

Toffolini has always carried out his thinking processes in the intimate format of the foldable notebook. Five of them are on display in the exhibition. His drawing books are studies of individual botanical, geological or physical phenomena, which he transforms from a scientific knowledge into a pictorial abstraction. The result is a collection of thoughts, fragments of knowledge and pictorial thinking on topics such as ecological systems, climatic changes and human-induced natural disasters, which revolve around the tense relationship between human culture and nature.

As a contemporary artist, he is a witness to the flood of images in the media reporting on climatic phenomena, ecological catastrophes and the ever-increasing destruction of nature, and he processes them by trying to organise the images as material. In a private archive, Toffolini collects large quantities of image references, newspaper articles, literature, scientific texts and historical engravings by Italian scholars, which he has collected in a personal atlas. From these, his motifs emerge as the essence of a long process of image-finding, which he then merges into surreal pictorial constellations. This research and process serves him as a study for his works, in which he allows individual elements, connected with knowledge of ecological principles, to become independent visual worlds. Nicola Toffolini creates oversized drawings reminiscent of historical copperplate engravings, but instead of miniaturising the image, he does not seek to compress a whole world into a tiny space; on the contrary, he directs the viewer’s attention to the details and amplifies them through size.

At first glance, Toffolini’s works seem as precise and objective as today’s high-resolution image-generating processes digitally scan every natural soil stratification and every living thing in search of patterns and facts. But in his relentlessly perfect drawings, we see a world that is no longer animated at its core, but disintegrates into fragments.

Nicola Toffolini (*1975 in Udine, IT) is an artist, performer and designer who lives and works in Florence (IT) and Coseano (IT). He completed his artistic training in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice (IT). He creates sculptures, installations and drawings. Toffolini was awarded the prestigious grant of the American Pollock-Krasner Grant Foundation (US), established in honour of the artistic legacy of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock. Together with artist Eva Geatti, he is the founder of the experimental cross-disciplinary theatre company Cosmesi (2003) and the design studio Cickine (2017) in the field of design. He exhibited also in collective shows and fairs such as: ArteFiera, Bologna (IT), Loft Project, Saint Petersburg (RU); Artissima and Parco Arte Vivente, Turin (IT); Expo Shanghai und Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, Shanghai (CN), Palazzo Re Enzo and Pinacoteca, Bologna (IT), Isola di Sant’Erasmo, Venice (IT), Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (IT), Brown Project Space, Milan (IT), Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Madrid (ES), Orto Botanico, Palermo and Parma (IT), Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice (IT), Schusev Museum of Architecture, Moscow (RU), Museo della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci, Mailand (IT).