19 Aug 2017

EXHIBITION »The Face. A Search For Clues« 19 Aug 2017 to 25 Feb 2018 in Dresden

From 19 August 2017 to 25 February 2018 the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum German Hygiene Museum in Dresden will feature the exhibition The Face. A Search for Clues. The curator of the exhibition is Kathrin Meyer from the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum; former ZfL director Sigrid Weigel devised the exhibition concept and served as an advisor for the show.

Faces gaze at us constantly – from portraits of celebrities in glossy magazines and screens, selfies on the internet, to posters and paintings. Innumerable cameras and databases record and store images of faces. How does this ubiquitous mediation transform our relationship to the face itself? What kind of influence does it have on our self-perception and modes of communication?

The exhibition addresses these questions in four chapters: »The face as form«, »Facial expression«, »Dot – Dot – Comma – Dash«, »The face as portrait«. Through objects drawn from art, cultural history and science, this exhibition investigates the face and various dimensions of its myriad meanings.

The exhibition catalogue is edited by Sigrid Weigel for the Deutsche Hygiene-Museum, entitled Das Gesicht. Bilder, Medien, Formate (Wallstein Verlag Göttingen 2017, 207 pages). It includes essays by Andreas Beyer, Hans Belting, Corina Caduff, Valentin Groebner, Thomas Macho, Angelika Neuwirth, Ulrike Vedder among others, as well as contributions by ZfL affiliated scholars Uta Kornmeier, Mona Körte, Tatjana Petzer and Judith Elisabeth Weiss.

The Exhibition in the Media

Cindy Sherman Untitled #567, 2016 dye sublimation metal print 132.4 x 121 cm Courtesy Cindy Sherman; Metro Pictures, New York; Sprüth Magers, Berlin – Copyright: Oliver Killig