DIE DAMEN

In the artistic practice of the artists’ collective DIE DAMEN (the ladies) invitations, postcards, postage stamps, printed matter, and all kinds of editions were all both components within actions and their starting points. From their very first postcard in 1988, on which DIE DAMEN presented themselves as the “four new members of the First Vienna Men’s Choir,” to a beer coaster, their hitherto latest cooperation in 2013, it was always habitual and everyday forms of communication that they used in a combination of self-staging, performance, and photography, and with plenty of wit and irony, as a means to satirize the mechanisms of the art world. At the same time their work could be read as a broader critical feminist commentary on art, politics, and society.

The basis of the exhibition was a collection of paraphernalia and multiples that the Generali Foundation has acquired, which were complemented by works from the Austrian Federal Photography Collection and the collection at Museum der Moderne Salzburg.

DIE DAMEN was founded in 1987 by ONA B. (1957 Vienna, AT), Evelyne Egerer (1955 Vienna, AT), Birgit Jürgenssen (1949—2003 Vienna, AT), and Ingeborg Strobl (1949 Schladming, AT—2017 Vienna, AT). In parallel to their own individual artistic work, at irregular intervals from the late 1980s to the middle of the 1990s they appeared together as a quartet, always perfectly styled, performing actions that kept a balance between earnest and satire. In 1993 Lawrence Weiner (1942—2021 New York, US) replaced Ingeborg Strobl as the group’s fourth member.