Tatjana Schaefer

PhD Researcher

Thesis: Painting’s Agency – Feminist Politics in the Works of Painters from the Heresies Collective

Supervisor: Professor Jo Applin     Advisor: Dr Lucy Bradnock

Funded by CHASE/AHRC

My research explores how feminist approaches to painting amongst artists from the New York City based Heresies Collective (1976-1992) encapsulated and vice-versa motivated key dynamics of the second-generation women’s liberation movement. I am investigating the practices of six painters – Emma Amos, Ida Applebroog, Harmony Hammond, Joan Snyder, May Stevens and Pat Steir – who were part of the publishing collective that produced the journal Heresies – a Feminist Publication on Art and Politics. My approach is to bring works into dialogue based on shared feminist grounds and mutual political activism, prior to questioning formal or stylistic proximities. At the same time, I am tracing differences in artmaking as reflections of an expanding pluralist approach to feminisms. My research understands and treats paintings as political artifacts which unlike other contemporaneous documents contain and transmit a high degree of affect; allowing me to deduce both artists’ subjective viewpoints and the wider components of a contemporary feminist zeitgeist traceable within individual works.

Research Areas and Interests

Postwar & Postmodern Art, Feminist Art, Painting Theory, Collectivity, American Art
Minimal Art, Land Art, East-West Artistic Dialogue in the Cold War Era

Curating

2018–2024: Assistant Curator for Postwar Art, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
Mary Miss, Knots, 1969, Acquisition & Publication (2023); MIX & MATCH. New Ways to See the Permanent Collection (2022-2025); Astrid Klein. That Perfect Love Drives Out Fear (2020); A Brief Collection Display of John Baldessari (2020);
Georg Baselitz. The Donation (2019), I transmit. 100 Years of Joseph Beuys (2021); Ambient for a Silent Forest – Kalas Liebfried in Dialogue with Joseph Beuys (2019)

Other Freelance Curating
2022: Shapes of Shelter, co-curated with Lisa Stoiber group show and publication at PLATFORM, Munich,
funded by the City Council of Munich and the Baumgart-Foundation, Vienna (2022)
2018: unfollow me, curator of group show at Nir Altman, Munich

Fellowship / Grants

2023-2026: AHRC CHASE Doctoral Studentship
provided by The Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts South-East England

2022-2024: Curatorial Fellow, Research Travel Fellowship: Linking Art Worlds
organised by Leibniz-Institut für Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Europa (GWZO) e.V., financed by the TERRA Foundation for American Art and the Getty Institute

2022: Exhibition Grant for the Group Exhibition Shapes of Shelter
PLATFORM Munich, Oct-Nov 2022, issued by the City Council of Munich

2020: Curatorial Fellow, UNIDEE Embedded Arts in a Post-pandemic Future
Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella, Italy

2011-15: Scholarship, The German Academic Scholarship Foundation

2013: Max-Weber-Scholarship for the Semester Course Art & Business
Sotheby’s Institute, London

Education

M.A. (with Distinction) in Arts Administration & Cultural Policy, Goldsmiths University of London, 2014-2015
Dissertation: Between Mediation and Experience Design. Do Current Trends in Curatorial Practice Meet Audience Expectations?

B.A. in International Business & Cultural Studies, University of Passau (Final Grade: 1,4), 2011-2014
Thesis: Identity Constructs and Challenges in Contemporary American Art, Matthew Barney, Kara Walker and Nikki S. Lee

Citations