The exhibition "Strangers to Ourselves" explores questions of (self-) depiction and representation in the visual arts since the end of the 19th century.
Major works from Von der Heydt Museum% collections show the ways in which roles defined by societal preconceptions ore inscribed in Images of human beings, and the effect this has an how they are perceived. The exhibition covers a broad range of works, from classical modern paintings by Paula Modersohn-Becker, Emmy Klinker, Toulouse-Lautrec, Christian Schad and Felix Vallotton, to works by Wols, Francis Bacon and Miriam Cahn, and up to the present day, represented by Tobias Zielony and Zanele Muholi, among others.
The title of the exhibition is taken from Julia Kristevo's 1990 book of the same narre. According to her central thesis, we are strangers to each other and resent each other to the same ex-tent that we are strangers to ourselves - and so it shall remain. This is precisely the point the philosopher recognizes as key in dealing with the concept of otherness.
The works in the exhibition reveal how a person's perception is guided or influenced by the staging of an image. In Paula Modersohn-Becker's figure portraits, the individual is abstracted in order to achieve generalization, Francis Bacon depicts human ex¬tremes and man's vulnerability in the world. Zanele Muholi's impactful self-portraits play subtly with gender-specific conventions and, in the sense of a visual activism, aim to dissolve repressive narratives.

Zanele Muholi - Andy Warhol - Heinrich Maria Davringhausen - Josef Scharl - Max [Mopp] Oppenheimer - Auguste Herbin - Adolf Erbslöh - Paula Modersohn-Becker - August Sander - Nicole Aders - Conrad Felixmüller -
Curator Anna Storm -