“LBM 08 BS 337” by Blaues Sofa/ CC BY
Cornelia Schleime was born in East Berlin in 1953 and by 1975 she had gotten her apprenticeship in hairdressing, as well as her masters in education and education for nursing. Schleime then studied graphic arts and painting until 1980. Her art was never a political message. She didn’t want to change East Berlin, she just felt she didn’t belong there. East Berlin was gray and very collectivist. From 1981 on her art was not allowed to be exhibited, as it was not what the GDR wanted. During the ban, she took photographs of herself with rope and other materials often over her head, which represented her feeling oppressed ( to view the mentioned work: http://www.cornelia-schleime.de/kunst/fotoinszenierung-und-super-8-filme). Interestingly during the early 80s schleime belonged to an alternative art group who went against the art of the GDR. When asked if living in East Berlin impacted her art she replied:
“( It would) have smoothened out my fractions. I did not want to change anything here, with the exception of myself. I was fed up with the way people betrayed themselves. I didn’t want to grow old that way.”
“I believe in general, and here I refer to the time in the East, that the oppression or limitations which I experienced did not influence painting. The painting was or is not for me a processing machine for political or personal emergency. In any case, I suffered more from the provinciality of the GDR than from their politics, so our conversations in the East were so often centered around the “universal.” No, I can handle nothing with my painting. My work should be purpose-free, only in this way can I open up new spaces. In the East, I had one of the cops, who was standing at the Friedrichstrasse junction, with the umbrella – that was the way to get my frustration, not the brush!”
Schleime desired to leave the GDR and asked many times to leave and in 1984 she was finally permitted to leave. Unfortunately, she could not bring all her work, as you could only bring what you could carry. She left paintings, sculptures, and photographs behind, all to be shipped to her later. When her friend went back to Schleime’s East Berlin apartment she found that it had been broken into and all that was left was trash. After the fall of the wall her GDR file was released to her and she discovered that her friend, Sascha Anderson worked for the GDR. Schlieme’s world had been twisted upside down,
“The worst thing is that the past is suddenly different from what you remember. You have to reconstruct everything again. Was he already spying on me? Did that already happen at the time? Did he tell them this or that? Or was it someone else? He always said the Stasi was after us, when in reality he was one of them. He even squealed about the performances he was participating in. For me, who had just arrived in the West, had returned from America, this was like a backward journey. It’s like a train that has climbed to the top of a mountain and suddenly the gas doesn’t work any more and it rolls backwards at full speed.” ( Interview when awarded with the Hannah-Höch-Preis 2016)
Schleime is about moving on, and making positive of the past. She took her GDR file and made art on them ( can be seen here: http://www.cornelia-schleime.de/kunst/stasi-serie) and many of them are very ironic.
In an interview with Christiane Bühling in 1996 Cornelia said:
“I think the topic was already completed for me, otherwise I would not have been able to handle the
topic of the Stasi files ironically in these self-presentations.
I would not have been able to choose this form from the immediate moment of embarrassment, but
when I was confronted with it, the time that I had lived in the West lay between, in which
I was very happy, and so was also a distance from the absurdities of this GDR there.
After the loss of my entire work for the new beginning in the West it was
necessary to throw away the past, to look forward and to throw myself into the work, especially
to have pictures for myself again!”
To see more of her art visit: http://www.cornelia-schleime.de/kunst/malerei
Schlieme, Cornelia. “I follow an inner longing… ” Interview with the Artist, By Bühling, Christiane 1996
www.cornelia-schleime.de. Retrieved 10 April 2017
Cornelia Schleime. Ein Wimpernschlag
Hannah-Höch-Preis 2016
25.11.2016–24.04.2017
Berlinische Galerie, Berlin http://db-artmag.com/en/96/feature/images-of-longing-a-talk-with-cornelia-schleime/
http://db-artmag.com/en/96/feature/images-of-longing-a-talk-with-cornelia-schleime/
Retrived 1o April 2017
“Biografie.” Startseite. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2017. <http://www.cornelia-schleime.de/biografie>.
“Exhibitions: CORNELIA SCHLEIME A EYELASH STROKE.” Berlinische Galerie – Museum für moderne und zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Apr. 2017.