Scherben invites you to Lesbian Legacies # 3 The Butch is Here to Stay a group exhibition with artists Ella C Bernhard, Dana DeGiulio, Risk Hazekamp, Ottilie Roederstein, Toni Schmale and Anne Schmidt. The Butch is Here to Stay is the second exhibition of the three-part exhibition project Lesbian Legacies which is curated by Scherben and Birgit Bosold. The Butch is Here to Stay will open on November 14 2025, and be on view until Dezember 14. 2025.

12.12. 7pm

Fem(me) Fire & Butch Power – Joan Nestles erotic legacy:

Joan Nestle is one of the major voices of the lesbian underground: a Jewish fem from the working class, radically queer, unabashedly lesbian, firmly feminist, uncompromisingly sex-positive, and staunchly anti-fascist. She is a co-founder of the legendary Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York, as well as an activist, community organizer, and author of groundbreaking texts that show how pleasurable politics can be – and how political pleasure truly is. As part of the exhibition series “Lesbian Legacies”, Lara Ledwa and Birgit Bosold talk about Joan Nestle’s commitment to lesbian history, about the community-building power of archives, and about their fascination with the erotic energy of butch–femme relationships.

An event in cooperation with etece Verlag.

14.12. 7pm

Artist talk Dana DeGiulio:

Dana DeGiulio (*1978, Chicago) lives and works in Brooklyn. She studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA 2007). In her practice, which spans painting, drawing, video, installation, writing, and teaching, she explores materiality beyond traditional representation and questions the aims of artistic means themselves. DeGiulio has held numerous solo and two-person exhibitions, including at the California Museum of Photography (Riverside, CA), Carrie Secrist Gallery (Chicago), and PPOW Gallery (New York). She is Associate Professor of Painting at RISD.

The public program is supported by Kemmler Foundation.

09/19/2025 in Chicago

Scherben invites you to Two Roses and a Briar Pipe, with the artists John Neff, Morag Keil, Connor Crawford, Adrian Piper and Jasia Rabiej. Two Roses and a Briar Pipe is curated by Scherben in cooperation with Leah Gallant, hosted by Co-Prosperity in Chicago and supported by the Goethe Institute Chicago.  Two Roses and a Briar Pipe will open on September 19 2025, and be on view until November 2nd 2025. Please join us for the opening on September 19 at 7pm in Chicago.

Mickael Marman, Dylan Spaysky and Sigmar Polke
Vulture

What are we looking for when we want to see art, even though we haven’t adequately finished our daily work tasks? Can art distract us without judging our limitations in pretending that a life with time for art is possible for everyone?

Art and life might be one, and it might offer a very free form of expression, and its appearance may empower our will and aspiration. In one way or another, we only enjoy art that builds bridges to our own skills and knowledge.

Exhibition Text
Floorplan

Kunst wie perfekte Kadaver (taz)

Scherben invites you to Lesbian Legacies # 2 – Archive Affections a duo exhibition of Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Millie Wilson. Archive Affections is the second exhibition of the three-part exhibition project Lesbian Legacies which is curated by Scherben and Birgit Bosold. Archive Affections will open on September 10 2025, and be on view until November 2nd 2025. Please join us for the opening on September 10 at 7pm as part of the Art Week Featured program. 
  
The exhibition Archive Affections presents, for the first time in Germany, works by Tiona Nekkia McClodden (1981, Arkansas) and Millie Wilson (1948, Arkansas), which bring repressed queer history to the forefront. Archives and Museums are not neutral repositories but powerful instruments that de-termine what is preserved and celebrated, and what is forgotten and dismissed as worthless. 
  
Both artists create alternative counter-archives and build their own “museum.” With Sleight of Figure (for Gladys), McClodden focuses on the musician and performer Gladys Bentley (1907–1960), who described herself as a “Black lesbian masculine woman.” Bentley was a queer icon of the Harlem Renaissance before being forced to deny her identity during the homophobic McCarthy era. McClodden places her at the center of a “Black queer genealogy” in cultural consciousness. 
  
Millie Wilson has been developing her ongoing meta-project Museum of Lesbian Dreams since 1989, which tells “the secret history of modernism” (Millie Wilson). Her works The Language of Dreams (1991) and Errors of Nature (1992) examine how psycho-analysis and sexology pathologized queer desire. With Twisted Love (1990), Wilson explores the subversive appropriation of lesbian pulp novels from the postwar period — texts written by men for a male audience, which queer women reinterpreted with pleasure. 
  
Archive Affections invites us to reclaim repressed histories and reopen historical voids as spaces for critical imagination. 
  
The exhibition is part of the three-part series Lesbian Legacies, which sketches, in bold outlines, the cultural heritage of lesbian  positions from the classical modernism of the early 20th century to the present. The project is funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds and is conceived and curated by Tarik Kentouche and Lorenz Liebig of Scherben, along with Birgit Bosold.

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Press
Berliner Morgenpost

Re-Memorizing Black Lesbian Legacies

Panel Talk: Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Birgit Bosold
Friday 12 Sep.  8pm

Scherben invites you to the panel talk with Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Birgit Bosold “Re-Memorizing Black Lesbian Legacies” happening on Friday September 12 at 8pm at Scherben. 

As part of the exhibition series Lesbian Legacies, artist Tiona Nekkia McClodden and curator Birgit Bosold discuss ›Black Queer Genealogy‹ and the artistic engagement with and against the silence of the archives. The point of departure is McClodden’s current work Sleight of Figure [For Gladys] (2024), an impressive homage to the legendary performer Gladys Bentley, whose legacy has been largely erased. At the heart of the conversation is the concept of ›re-memorization‹ and the claim to a radical epistemic sovereignty of Black queer experiences, as called for by cultural theorist Tavia Nyong’o.

The panel talk is supported by Kemmler Foundation and part of the Art Week Berlin Featured Night program.

Harder Better
Angélique Heidler

In Angélique Heidler’s paintings, figures are set against a variety of backgrounds, media and motifs. Small add-ons and decorative elements frame, or adorn, them. They are appealing: glittery, fluffy, smooth, pink, shiny and small. Most of these objects were found in charity or 1-euro stores – perhaps cheapness and glamour do not exclude each other. Their placements are based on personal and ad hoc decisions, like a plot that never settles into a single meaning. On large-scale canvases, they sometimes interlock, then dematerialise again. Heidler approaches these visual moments in her compositions: in some paintings, the surface opens up; in others, it withdraws, revealing only hints without anticipating all scope for interpretation.

Exhibition Text (by Leonie Schmiese)
Floorplan

Die Leere im Warenglanz (Berliner Morgenpost)

The exhibition is funded by La Société des Auteurs dans les Arts Graphiques et Plastiques.

We invite you to our public program at Scherben during our exhibition Lesbian Legacie #1 Grace of Desire (1.5. – 8.6.2025, Claude Cahun, Florence Henri, Marta Hoepffner, Krista Beinstein).

18.5.2025  19 Uhr 
Dr. Claudia Reiche in conversation with Krista Beinstein: Artist Krista Beinstein (auf Deutsch)
22.5.2025  19 Uhr
Dr. Elisaveta Dvorakk (HU Berlin): Queere Sehnsüchte, fotografische Freiheiten – Annemarie Schwarzenbach im Spiegel der illustrierten Presse (auf Deutsch)

8.6.2025  19 Uhr
Dr. Thomas Love, (University of Missouri): „Egoism for Two: The Surrealist Muse through a Genderqueer Lens“ (in English)

The Kemmler Foundation is supporting the public programs of our exhibition series Lesbian Legacies.

Lesbian Legacies is supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds.

Lesbian Legacies #1:
Grace of Desire – Rebellion, Surrealism, Photography
Claude Cahun, Florence Henri, Marta Hoepffner, Krista Beinstein

Lesbian Legacies presents a three-part exhibition series offering a fascinating perspective on art history. It highlights previously overlooked viewpoints and honors lesbian artists as both artistic and social avant-garde. The opening exhibition, “Grace of Desire“ (01.05.-08.06.) offers a reassessment of Surrealism through the lens of queer photographers.

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Ausstellungstext deutsch
Grace of Desire Floorplan

Press
TAZ
berlinartlink
Siegessäule

public program at Scherben:
18.5. 7pm
Dr. Claudia Reiche in conversation with Krista Beinstein: Artist Krista Beinstein (in german)

22.05. 7pm
Dr. Elisaveta Dvorakk (HU Berlin): Queere Sehnsüchte, fotografische
Freiheiten – Annemarie Schwarzenbach im Spiegel der illustrierten Presse (in german)

8.6. 7pm
Dr. Thomas Love, (University of Missouri): „Egoism for Two: The Surrealist Muse through a Genderqueer Lens“ (in english)

Supported by Kemmler Foundation [Kemmler Kemmler GmbH].