Lola von der Gracht
Artist, Writer, Performer
Contact: studio@lolavdg.com
Instagram: @lolavondergracht
Education
Freie Kunst (MA Sculpture) at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
2019 – 2020 Prof. Dominique Gonzalez - Foerster (Meisterschüler-Diploma)
2016 – 2018 Prof. Trisha Donnelly
2014 – 2016 Prof. Rita McBride
Lola von der Gracht is an interdisciplinary artist whose work encompasses photography, collage, installation and performance.
The central theme of her work is the exploration of identity, gender, belonging and community from a queer-feminist perspective.
With a collage-like technique, she combines photography, drawing, found footage and poetry to explore complex issues of emotional, social and historical themes.
Lola von der Gracht's works are a sensitive dialogue between personal experiences, media environments and a collective memory that illustrates the complexity of emotionality and queer-feminist history. She shows how diverse superimpositions and transformations open up new perspectives and make change possible.
Her works are described as “fragments of a larger quest”, designed "like a puzzle with gaps and open questions to create space for reflection and interpretation."
In her most recent works, Lola von der Gracht interweaves transgender history by exploring both collective experiences and personal stories of transgender people over time. In addition to reflecting on historical narratives, she actively engages with contemporary trans histories through socio-cultural projects and workshops, where intersectionality is of particular importance.
Lola von der Gracht's work invites the audience to question social norms and traditional perceptions. She often presents her work in public spaces in order to reach as diverse an audience as possible.
Selected Stipends and Awards
2024 Artists Inside Fellowship
2024 ars viva-Preis 2025 (Shortlist)
2023 Art Explora Foundation Stipend at Cité International des Arts, Paris
2022 #TakeHeart Residency BiP (Bündnis internationaler Produktionshäuser), Fonds Darstellende Künste
2022 Stiftung Kunstfonds Kickstarter Grant for Graduates of Kunstakademie Düsseldorf
2021 Peter Mertes Stipendium (Shortlist)
2021 Von Rundstedt Förderstipendium 2021
2020 NRW Bank Kunstpreis 2020 Audience Award
2018 Residency Stipend of the Cité International des Arts, Paris
2017 Travel Stipend to excellent students of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from Kunstverein
für die Rheinlande und Westfalen and Kunst -und Kulturstiftung der Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf
Public Art Collections
2023 Bundesumweltministerium (Federal Ministry for the Environment), Berlin
Selected Exhibitions and Performances
2025
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
Selected Press & Interviews
Portrait on Queer Art & Time by Zalando (05/2024)
Work in progress - Gespräche über Arbeit (12/2022)
Interview Magazine (US) (03/2019)
Lola von der Gracht recently exhibited a large work at the K21 in the show "Coming to voice" and won the Rundstedt Förderstipendium. Now she is one of six young artists who are presenting works in the exhibition "Journey Through a Body" at the Kunsthalle. All of these international artists - Tschabalala Self, Christina Quarles, Kate Cooper, Cajsa von Zeipel and Nicole Ruggiero - explore gender identity and body perception from different angles. It is a cross-gender and cross-cultural search for the self.
Lola von der Gracht's work is about humanity and tolerance, about the multi-layered emotions and needs of each: Hope, faith, fear, love, belonging. The central theme for von der Gracht is the gender issue, which has become the focus of public debate in recent years thanks to courageous pioneers. Even today, sexuality and gender identity that is not hetero-normative is criminalized in 69 states, with 15 even facing the death penalty.
Von der Gracht turned her negative experiences into something positive - art. "It is the place I have created for myself, my spiritual, creative space. I stay curious, try new things, want to learn and always challenge myself." Confidence is contagious" says Lola von der Gracht in one of her works. A hopeful message.
Dr. Dorothee Achenbach on "Journey Through A Body", Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Rheinische Post, 06/21
Lola von der Gracht’s cross-media work is devoted to human beings in their search for identity. With the help of installation-based, performative, photographic and videographic works, aswell as performance, music, and fashion, von der Gracht explores, among other things, social belonging, origin and gender in an effort to gain greater visibility for marginalised groups. Their visual language is gentle and forceful at the same time. Using a limited set of materials and techniques, the works succeed in conveying their central message and spur the viewers to engage with their own prejudices, constructs, and assumptions: short phrases, statements, or allusions, painted or spoken, spark reflection. Photographs with a poetic quality show situations and places that offer room for advanced thought. In collages of found footage, von der Gracht takes up existing normative images and understandings of the body and puts them up for discussion. The search for identity is also reflected in her effort to crate a safe space for members of the LGBTQIA* community.
For the exhibition, von der Gracht has created an outdoor environment indoors, in which sculptural elements and above all large-scale drawings and photographs are on display.
Alicia Holthausen and Dr. Gregor Jansen on "Journey Through A Body", Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 05/21
Lola von der Gracht documents how beautiful it is to step out into the open, to step out of oneself into freedom. And at the same time: how dangerous it can be there. For the outdoors is always also the unprotected space of a new order and of a new and unrehearsed togetherness, which therefore has yet to be defined. In general, some of the works shown here are grounded in melancholy.
Philipp Holstein on "Journey Through A Body", Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Westdeutsche Zeitung, 06/21
In Lola von der Gracht's work, each work is a fragment of a larger quest, arranged like a puzzle, but with gaps and open questions that explore identity. There are repetitions, changes and transformations in it that sensitively draw from personal experiences and confrontations with medial environments.
Lola von der Gracht sees artistic work as a tool to bring about healing and empowerment. Lola's photography, video works and installative-performative space installations always draw from personal experience.
Dora Cohnen on "We Are Known By Many Names", Mouches Volantes, City Review Cologne, 04/21
Lola von der Gracht's artistic work is an intense, sensitive, cross-media exploration and questioning of identity. The incredibly broad spectrum of her artistic work ranges from texts, poems, drawings, objects, video and sound works, photographs and collages, spatial installations and performance to her own band "Die Hässlichen Vögel".
Dr. Dorothee Achenbach, Isabelle von Rundstedt, Prof. Dr. Robert Fleck, Dr. Gregor Jansen, Dr. Rupert Pfad (Jury Von Rundstedt Grant), 02/21
With the help of the collage technique, Lola von der Gracht shows that the human being is the result of superimpositions, in which even supposedly disparate things can exist simultaneously, and change is possible.
Cécile Huber & Florentine Muhry for "Coming To Voice", K21 Kunstsammlung NRW, 01/21
Lola von der Gracht and Isabella Fürnkäs deal with the opening of self-organized structures of artistic collaboration, as well as the critical negotiation of those constraints of representation and institutionalization in which they find themselves as artists. In 2016, their video work "Selfiecalypse Teen Hunger Ultra Death Attack 1.0" (2015) was on view at the Abteiberg Museum Mönchengladbach. A selfie stick duel in which the Fürnkäs and von der Gracht fought not only against each other, but as it were against themselves. Their class-independent intervention for this year's Rundgang consists of banners that selectively overwrite the corridors and spaces of the academy with words like "Soft", "Power", "Money", "Love". As a sensitive, aesthetic, provocative and political statement, these transparent "Love Banners" question existing power structures, not least against the backdrop of current political and social developments in recent months. They are part of an ephemeral, performative protest action that seeks to open up new spaces for action beyond mere criticism.
Eva Birkenstock, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen,
Jury statement Travel Grant to outstanding students of Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, 02/17
Impressum
Lola von der Gracht
Goltzstr. 55
10781 Berlin
studio@lolavdg.com
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