Agenda

14.03 - 11.05.2025

ProtoZone18

curated by Michelangelo Miccolis
23.05 - 20.07.2025

ProtoZone19

curated by Phila Bergmann & Thea Reifler
01.08 - 28.09.2025

ProtoZone20 (FINALE)

curated by Lucie Tuma, Michelangelo Miccolis, Phila Bergmann & Thea Reifler

Sarah
Doerfel

Part of ProtoZone17: Stories of those left behind, 15.11.2024-12.01.2025

 

Truce (2021)

 

“Truce” was filmed in Europe’s largest leech farm in Giessen, West Germany, and in the home of transgender activist Ryūki. The video work shows the dynamic difference between symbiosis and parasitism using the example of the relationship between humans and medicinal leeches. Used for thousands of years on all continents for healing purposes, medicinal leeches were overfished and exterminated in Western Europe at the beginning of the last century. Since then, they have had to be imported or bred in farms. In today’s reconstructive surgery, it is common practice to kill the worms, which are labelled as “non-sterile medical devices”, after their first application. Ryūki founded the “Leechylove” initiative, which campaigns for species-appropriate husbandry of the animals after medical use, as they can live up to 30 years in the wild. The activist’s leeches feed on their blood to relieve chronic pain. The community between the species lives in a close physical dependency, which Ryūki calls symbiosis.

 

The hermaphroditic worms have both female and male genitalia, which they can use individually or both simultaneously by both penetrating and being penetrated. Both sexual partners can become pregnant during the same sexual intercourse. Ryūki lives with around 600 leeches in their house in Bavaria and forms a community with an alternative understanding of gender identity and more-than-human relationships.

 

Generously supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds/ Neustart Kultur

 

 

Changing Room (2019/2023)

made of latex, steel and clay

 

“Changing Room” deals with the constant rebirth of the remembering self into a remodelled mental and physical form. In the egg, the foetus speculates about digging in damp soil. The meaning of everything we encounter changes depending on whether we are moving on eight intact legs, two injured ones or creeping without any. Metamorphosis is a permanent state.

 

Sarah Doerfel’s works deal with temporal and physical transition zones. The negation of a boundary with our environment is central to her dynamic-relational understanding of identity. As permanent trans-beings, the seeming separation between death and life, past, future and present, dissolves for us at a closer look. With the base principle of evolution as a permanent condition of change, wide doors open into narrative speculation. Intermediate states of symbiosis and parasitism, mineral and organic being, human and more-than-human, pain and healing are at the centre of her sculptures, video works and paintings.
Her work has been shown internationally, including at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, Berlin, the Macro Museo, Rome, and the Kunstverein Munich. She has received grants from the Stiftung Kunstfonds, the Cultural Department of the City of Munich and the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and Art, among others. Doerfel studied Fine Art and Photography & Video Art in London and Munich.

Shedhalle – Sarah Doerfel

Vincent (2020), photo credit Sarah Doerfel

Shedhalle – Sarah Doerfel

Truce, 2021, Video Still, Sarah Doerfel