The exhibition starts from the novel “Scorpion” (Der Skorpion), published during the interwar period by the Romanian-German writer Anna Elisabet Weirauch (1887-1970).
Through “The Scorpion Snuff Box – a visual journey into a queer novel,” we envision a journey through the ideas of the novel, in which the author offers a subjective exploration formulated through the surrealist method of objective chance in a “lesbian” universe.
The curatorial journey imagined among the ideas of the novel “Scorpion” (Der Skorpion), published during the interwar period by the Romanian-German writer Anna Elisabet Weirauch (1887–1970), proposes a subjective exploration, at times inspired by the method of objective chance, into a “lesbian” universe from different times and places. This universe is expanded and updated on multiple levels with nuances from our contemporary days. Objective chance was developed by surrealists in the 1920s and 1930s as a creative method based on the seemingly random encounter with an external cause whose emotional impact is so powerful that it generates intense passion. In the case of this exhibition, the passion for “Scorpion,” the first bildungsroman in the history of literature that follows the development of a cisgender lesbian in Berlin in the 1920s, was cultivated through friendship with lesbian activists Suzette Robichon and Traude Bührmann.
The exhibition “The Scorpion Snuff Box – a visual journey into a queer novel” proposes a revisiting of this history in a queer-surrealist dialogue with contemporary art, placing the queer experience on a historical continuum. The documentary section includes fragments of history preserved in the Spinnboden Lesbian Archive collection in Berlin. Through these documents, the lesbian universe of Weimar-era Germany is introduced, a time of liberalization that transformed the city into a true queer capital, up until the rise of National Socialism and the outbreak of World War II.
Artists:
Maria Balea, Traude Bührmann, Mimi Ciora, Diana Matilda Crișan, Ramona Dima, Georgiana Dobre, Simona Dumitriu, Katja Lee Eliad, Julio Elvisey, Yishay Garbasz, Daniela Groza, Tirdad Hashemi, Soufia Erfanian, Mia Imami Harrison, Alexandra Ivanciu, Anastasia Manole, Hortensia Mi Kafchin, Marta Mattioli, Stefania Meșteriuc, Marta Orlando, Ileana Pașcalău, Iulia Pordea, Orka, Clementine Roy, Sophie Utikal, Kjersti Vetterstad.
This project was part of the national cultural program "Timișoara – European Capital of Culture in the year 2023" and is funded by the City of Timișoara, through the Center for Projects. The exhibition is collaborative curatorial project based on research by Iulia Dondorici and Valentina Iancu; coordinator Elena Radu, part of the project Invisible Histories.
