Alexandra Hopf

77 Frauen unserer Zeit

From Meret Oppenheim to Susan Sontag

Alexandra Hopf (b. Kassel, 1968; lives and works in Berlin) explores the creative process by weaving together facts and fictions in a dense web. In works spanning film, painting, and sculpture, Hopf creates a space for the reinterpretation of historical narratives and charts a fresh perspective on evolving constructions of identity and representation. 

The inspiration for the publication 77 Frauen unserer Zeit was the historic book Unsere Zeit in 77 Frauenbildnissen (Our Time in 77 Portraits of Women, 1930), which gathers photographs of prominent women of the Weimar Republic and spotlights their professional achievements. The artist revisits this concept almost 100 years later and continues it in 77 portraits of women who personally influenced her—role models from the second half of the twentieth century. She reproduces freely circulating photographic portraits from the Internet in reverse glass paintings—a medium that resists fleeting screen reproduction and preserves the image. 

Which visions of womanhood do they embody, how do the women present themselves? Who has entered the cultural memory and who has been forgotten? These are questions that guide the series. With a preface by Rebecca Wilton and an in-depth essay by Andreas Prinzing.