Rosemarie Trockel

The artwork Frankfurter Engel von Rosemarie Trockel was part of the exhibition Tell me about ~~yesterday~~ tomorrow (Nov. 28, 2019 until Oct. 18, 2020).

About the artist

Since the 1980s, Rosemarie Trockel (born in 1952 in Schwerte) has created pieces in which she takes up a critical position that counters artistic work that is characterized by male dominated thought and action. With a conceptual approach and using different media, she investigates the elements that constitute society, such as norms, role models, symbols, and cultural codes, and questions them with regard to their function and self-evidence. Her works combine artistic issues with philosophical, theological, and scientific discourse.

Replica 2019, Quartz sand, H 2.5 m

Frankfurter Engel is a replica of a cenotaph by Rosemarie Trockel that has been displayed in downtown Frankfurt since 1994 to remind people of the persecution and murder of homosexual women and men under National Socialism. The sculpture is based on an “angel with a banderole” that originally adorned the west portal of Cologne Cathedral as a neo-Gothic gable figure. All that remains of the original is a plaster cast with broken wings, which Trockel was able to reproduce using wax casting. She severed the angel’s head and reattached it at a slight angle so that the fracture point remains visible as a scar. With this slight anomaly, the androgynous figure reminds people of the irreparable damage that resulted from persecution by the National Socialist regime. The angel is a messenger and informant as well as a guardian angel for the victims, and reminds people that “men who love men and women who love women can always be persecuted.”

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