The legendary American photographer and activist NAN GOLDIN new exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie’s is the first exhibition in Germany to present a comprehensive overview of Goldin’s work. They are showing it in style too as the exhibition is installed in six unique buildings designed by Hala Wardé, an architect who frequently works with Goldin. Each building is designed in response to the specific piece. Together they constitute a village.
Goldin’s work explores in snapshot-style the emotions of the individual, in intimate relationships, and the bohemian LGBT subcultural communities, especially dealing with the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Her most notable work is The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. In the slideshow and monograph (1986) Goldin portrayed her chosen “family”, meanwhile documenting the post-punk and gay subcultures. This is included in thie exhibition.
Also on display is her magnum opus; The Other Side (1992– 2021), a historical portrait produced as an homage to her trans friends whom she photographed 1972–2010; Sisters, Saints and Sibyls (2004–2022), a testament to the trauma of families and suicide; Fire Leap (2010–2022), a foray into the world of children; Memory Lost (2019–2021), a claustrophobic journey through drug withdrawal; and Sirens (2019–2020), a trip into drug ecstasy.
Goldin’s legacy dates back some 50 years to her first solo show, held in Boston , which was based on her photographic journeys among the city’s gay and transgender communities, to which she had been introduced by her friend David Armstrong. While living in downtown Boston at age 18, Goldin “fell in with the drag queens,” living with them and photographing them. Among her work from this period is Ivy wearing a fall, Boston (1973). Unlike some photographers who were interested in psychoanalyzing or exposing the queens, Goldin admired and respected their sexuality. Goldin said, “My desire was to show them as a third gender, as another sexual option, a gender option. And to show them with a lot of respect and love, to kind of glorify them because I really admire people who can re-create themselves and manifest their fantasies publicly. I think it’s brave”.
This Will Not End Well started as a comprehensive international exhibition tour at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, then the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and opens now at the Neue National-galerie in Berlin (23 November 2024–6 April 2025); It continues afterwards to the Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan (9 October 2025–15 February 2026) and Réunion des musées nationaux – Grand Palais, Paris (March–June 2026).
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