Sanja Iveković (born 1949 in Zagreb) combines artistic practice with social activism. She is considered one of Croatia's first feminist artists. In her early works, which emerged in the context of the Yugoslavian “New Art Practice” movement, she examined the relationship between mass media and ideology. Later projects explore the transformation of the Balkan countries from socialist to nationalist political systems. Iveković's works criticize the position of women in society and the portrayal of women in the media. She notes the relapse into a patriarchal system and deals with violence against women - a topic that has become increasingly visible in recent years.
Iveković often uses dazzling advertising images that show models and juxtaposes them with a social reality in the form of text, such as women affected by domestic violence.
Ulrike Rosenbach (born 1943 in Salzdetfurth near Hildesheim) is considered a pioneer of video art. She studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy with Joseph Beuys and discovered the then new medium of video early on. In her processual and cross-media way of working, videos are created from performances and videos are turned into installations. This way, the artist creates entire work cycles.
In 1969, Rosenbach came into contact with American feminism and became part of this movement himself. Her themes are female identity and the role as a female artist, wife and mother. Ulrike Rosenbach's work puts her finger in the wound of patriarchal role clichés and counteracts them with other images of femininity.
Gabriele Stötzer (born 1953 in Emleben near Gotha) addresses the (female) individual in her works, which she places in opposition to a totalitarian society. After a year in prison for “state defamation” in the Hoheneck women’s prison in de GDR, she turned from writing to photography and film.
Among other things, she created numerous photographs, all of which are based on the naked female body, which she explores in performances and productions with other (non-)artists. With her work she rebels against the socialist, petty bourgeois and dogmatic taboos of her time. Only in art does she find the freedom for her commitment against incapacitation and regulation.
In the early 1980s, Gabriele Stötzer was a co-founder of an Erfurt group of artists and, in 1989, the citizens' initiative “Women for Change”. In the same year, she was a co-initiator of the occupation of the Stasi district administration in Erfurt.
