Berlin – Grace of Desire: Rebellion, Surrealism, Photography
Press release courtesy of Dr. Birgit Bosold and Kunstraum Scherben, Berlin
Krista Beinstein, Prothesia 2 aus Klitoride Extravaganz, 2004, Lesbian Legacies #1 Grace of Desire, Berlin 2025. Courtesy: Artist and Scherben (c) Max Eulitz VG Bild-Kunst.
Grace of Desire – Rebellion, Surrealism, Photography
Claude Cahun, Marta Hoeppffner, Florence Henri, Krista Beinstein
01.05. 2025 – 08.06.2025
at Kunstraum Scherben
Scherben e.V.
Leipziger Str. 61
10117 Berlin, Germany
The invention of photography in the mid-19th century opened up a new artistic terrain for female and non-binary artists beyond the confines of male-dominated institutions. Denied access to formal art education for much of the time, these artists found in the new medium still free from entrenched gatekeepers a space for creative and professional self-realization.
Compact cameras such as the Leica I, which became available in the 1920s, enabled new forms of mobility and spontaneity. Travel and fashion photography, along with the rise of photojournalism, offered a variety of career opportunities. At the time, Paris was the electrifying center of artistic and cultural revolutions a laboratory of modernity where social libertinism met avant-garde experimentation, drawing together transnational networks. Salons hosted by figures like Gertrude Stein and Natalie Clifford Barney, with their lesbian circles, became vital gathering places for intellectuals and artists from across Europe and the United States. Photographers who would later gain international renown Gisèle Freund, Lisette Model, Germaine Krull, Ilse Bing, and Lee Miller, to name just a few challenged entrenched gender hierarchies and shaped the development of the photographic medium through both technical and aesthetic innovation.
The female nude long off-limits to women in academic training for so-called moral reasonsxbecame a site of resistance and self-empowerment. Queer perspectives and surrealist experimentation shattered social conventions and reimagined the visual language of bodies, desire, and freedom.
Exhibition view at Scherben, Lesbian Legacies #1 Grace of Desire, Berlin 2025. Courtesy: Scherben (c) Max Eulitz VG Bild-Kunst.
Florence Henri, o.T., 1929, Lesbian Legacies #1 Grace of Desire, Berlin 2025. Courtesy: Frac ile-de-france, Archive Florence Henri / Galleria Martini & Ronchetti and Scherben (c) Max Eulitz VG Bild-Kunst.
Krista Beinstein, Prothesia 3 aus Klitoride Extravaganz, 2004, Lesbian Legacies #1 Grace of Desire, Berlin 2025. Courtesy: Artist and Scherben (c) Max Eulitz VG Bild-Kunst.
Related Link
Lesbian Legacies – Kunstraum Scherben’s three-part exhibition series offers a fascinating perspective on the role of lesbian artists in art history.