Christine Würmell

Public Un/Happiness

Forms of Protest as "Post-Activist Conceptualism"

Newspaper clippings, snippets of text, pop-cultural artifacts, and, above all, her own and found photographs and drawings are the material that the artist Christine Würmell (b. Frankfurt am Main, 1972; lives and works in Berlin) compiles in thematically and formally dense sprawling settings. In the 1990s, she started documenting the radical transformation of public spaces that commenced in Berlin and elsewhere after the fall of the Wall. In particular, she trains her lens on how graffitists appropriate monuments and street furniture. Enriched with historic press excerpts and other collected evidence such as flyers from protests against rising rents, Würmell’s works constitute a large body of research-based visual material that she arranges with a keen eye for its conceptual dimensions as well as its critical reflection of society.

The monograph Public Un/Happiness offers a broad-based introduction to Christine Würmell’s oeuvre. With essays by Bettina Klein and Raimar Stange, and a conversation between Birgit Eusterschulte and the artist.