Gabriele Stötzer. Touching the Spirits.

Gabriele Stötzer’s wide-ranging body of work has received enormous attention in recent years after having gone largely unnoticed for more than thirty years. Its beginnings lie in the underground of the GDR. Following Wolf Biermann’s expatriation in 1976, Gabriele Stötzer served a one-year prison sentence before consciously deciding to remain in East Germany. She photographed, made Super 8 films, wove, painted, published literary texts in underground magazines and artists’ books, and organised fashion-object shows and performances together with the women artists’ group in Erfurt. On 4 December 1989, together with like-minded activists, she occupied the district headquarters of the State Security Service in Erfurt—the first occupation of a Stasi headquarters, an act of civil disobedience unprecedented in German history. Her monograph is published on the occasion of the solo exhibition Dabeisein und nicht schweigen at Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, 19 June – 6 December 2026. Gabriele Stötzer (born 1953 in Emleben near Gotha) lives and works as an artist in Erfurt. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at institutions including Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Galerie Loock (Berlin), and Galeria Monopol (Warsaw). In 2024, she was awarded the Pauli Prize in Bremen for her work.