Since the 1960s, Katharina Sieverding has inventively used photography as a means of political intervention in contemporary issues. Curatorial fellow Peter Murphy sheds light on a recent installation he curated featuring the artist’s works.

Employing a variety of photographic technologies, Sieverding’s oeuvre addresses topics ranging from right-wing conservatism to nuclear warfare. Her digital slide projection Transformer, currently on view in Gallery 1120, is her first work executed in the large-scale format for which she is known. In it, she presents gender as an evolving spectrum rather than a fixed category.

In 1974, Sieverding was the only woman included in the Swiss exhibition Transformer: Aspects of Travesty, which explored gender fluidity in art, music, and popular culture. The artist exhibited Transformer, which was presented as a slideshow that cycled through Kodak Ektachrome slides in which the artist’s face is combined with that of her partner and collaborator, Klaus Mettig.

The photographs originate from the pair’s self-portraits in the series Motorkamera (1973–74); they were then manipulated and projected to a monumental size. Many of the superimpositions do not perfectly align, since the artists’ expressions and poses change, but there are distinct moments when the two faces are in sync. The multichannel slideshow—now projected digitally—allows discordance and harmony to appear across time and space, emphasizing the dynamic nature of identity. Rather than conceive of gender as a binary, Sieverding’s feminist intervention in Transformer envisions gender equality as inclusive of all.

Transformer 1973/74, another work on view, alters one of the large-scale photographs from the slideshow by doubling and reversing it, showcasing Sieverding’s experimentation with photographic processes. She used solarization to reverse the black and white tones of the photograph and cyan filtering to add the vibrant blue hue to the faces, further distinguishing the diptych from the earlier version.

The visual metamorphosis that occurs across the multiple iterations of Transformer acts as an allegory for selfhood, presenting a self that evolves intentionally. Given that intense debates regarding gender—including the legality of reproductive rights and trans identities—continue across the globe, Sieverding’s Transformer is as incisive a critique today as it was 50 years ago.

Katharina Sieverding: Transformer is curated by Peter Murphy, the Stefan Engelhorn Curatorial Fellow in the Busch-Reisinger Museum.