Jody Korbach

Remember what they took from us

The Crumbling Promises of a Dominant Social Order

Jody Korbach’s (b. 1991, grew up in Dortmund; lives and works in Düsseldorf) art serves her as a medium that lets her frame both indictments of social structures and critical self-reflections. She insistently questions which position the individual can occupy in an ongoing power struggle, and whether it is even possible to live up to one’s own yearnings in a field traversed by the dynamics of community and social norms. Korbach scrutinizes concerns such as belonging, class struggle, the promises of advancement, and the balancing act between personal responsibility and the constraints of structural realities. 

Remember what they took from us is a meme from 2018 that took on the originally ethnonationalist plaint about an allegedly more glorious past we had been deprived of and subjected it to irony. The first monograph on Jody Korbach’s work reinterprets the suggestive prompt as a question. Who still remembers? What is being remembered, and what do the different ways of remembering imply for our present time? Essays by Jennifer Braun, The Gen Z Art Critic, Annekathrin Kohout, and Julian Volz explore these questions in light of selected works by Korbach, providing in-depth insight into the idea behind her practice.