As part of the exhibition “The Blue Rider Women, ” which focuses on twelve female artists associated with the Blue Rider movement, contemporary artist Daniela Comani presents her intervention “Orlando’s Library” in the accompanying collection presentation. Her work engages with the issues of visibility and art-historical attribution explored in the exhibition.

At first glance, the large-scale work appears to be an impressive library: 240 books are arranged in rows on eight shelves. Only upon closer inspection does it become apparent that Comani has altered the book covers and subtly recontextualized the titles of well-known works from literary and cultural history.

A book titled “Die Blaue Reiterin” is also found in this library, thereby establishing a direct connection to the exhibition. The familiar “Blauer Reiter” becomes “Die Blaue Reiterin”: a slight linguistic shift in the title that draws attention to the female artists associated with the Blue Rider movement while simultaneously raising the question of who remains visible in art history and who fades into the background.

Orlando’s Library invites viewers to look closely and reinterpret the familiar. What at first appears to be a library thus becomes a surprising exploration of memory, gender, and the cultural canon.

Daniela Comani reinterprets well-known stories and role models. Through the deliberate reversal of gender roles in particular, she reveals how language shapes our thinking and how strongly the canon of art and cultural history remains dominated by male perspectives to this day.

Fri, Oct. 23, 26, 12:00–12:30 p.m.
(The event will take place in German)

On the intervention “Orlando’s Library” with artist Daniela Comani and curatorial assistant Bettina Löwen