Kunstverein Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 2025

Installation of 77 reverse glass paintings, film screening, film costumes

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The presentation re-examines the narratives of women in art and cultural history, opening a dialogue on the shifting perceptions of self, identity, and memory.

Hopf does this by having the characters in a collection of unstable personas that manifest themselves through various roles and stagings. At the centre of the exhibition is her film of the same name, Being Renée Sintenis, which follows the Berlin sculptor Renée Sintenis (1888- 1965), a celebrated personality of the 1920s. The film shows how Sintenis reclaims her own history and questions the image imposed on her.

The costumes of the production, which are rich in 20th century art historical references, are part of the exhibition. In these film costumes, Hopf presents the viewer with multiple forms of identity - they are a reminder of how fashion and the resulting self-presentations are contextualised and communicated. The artist‘s identity is thus not only staged, but made visible as a fluid construction through costume and performance.

In The Women of My Life, Hopf transforms 77 portraits from the historical book Unsere Zeit in 77 Frauenbildnissen (Our Time into 77 Portraits of Women) from 1930 into reverse glass paintings and weaves them into a contemporary anthology characterised by the personal memories of influential women from the 1970s to the 1990s. Here, too, the question arises as to which role models were visible and available at different times – and how their portrayal has changed over the decades.

Using film, painting and stage design, Hopf transforms the Kunstverein into a space for the reinterpretation of historical narratives, enabling a new perspective on the changing constructions
of identity and representation. On all levels, her works show how the self is shaped by staging, fashion and memory - and make the instability and changeability of artistic identity tangible.

Susanne Prinz
Fotos: Ludger Paffrath