Wiebke Siem: The Maximal Minimum (Bilingual edition)

Wiebke Siem (1954 Kiel, DE – Berlin, DE) became known in the 1990s for extensive installations in which she alienated everyday objects, such as pieces of clothing, shoes, bags, or toys, or transformed them into oversized objects.

Wiebke Siems uses pieces of furniture, objects, and materials with domestic connotations and whimsical, often puppet-like figures to create psychologically charged installations that are as oppressive as they are humorous and that raise questions about societal role models. Siem’s art repeatedly employs a formal language and a mode of presentation that refer to ethnological objects and collections. This enables her to comment on Modernism’s problematic appropriation strategies toward non-European art. In addition to borrowing motifs from art and cultural history, Siem critically engages the mechanisms of the male-dominated art business – a central theme in her oeuvre.