Everybody

The artworks on display focus on the body not as a static category, but as a dynamic construct shaped by social, historical, and emotional influences.

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  – Eva & Adele, "Biographische Skulptur No. 33", 2020; Foto: Bernd Borchardt

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  – Lauryn Youden, siège d’amour (Edward VII), 2025; Foto: Aude Mayer

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  – Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, Morning Routines, 2019

Our perception of bodies is shaped by social structures and historical narratives. Personal, political, and social processes are negotiated within and through bodies. Numerous movements of the 20th and 21st centuries have fought to make these structures visible, to question and break through them, and to celebrate the body as a place of freedom. In her book *Everybody – A Book about Freedom*, author Olivia Laing explores some of these processes. Looking toward the 21st century, Laing offers this concerned observation: “The victories we’ve won were hard-fought but not secured for eternity, and now we face the threat of a relapse into conditions we thought we had overcome.”

Inspired by Laing’s book, the group exhibition “everybody” takes up this theme. The artworks on display focus on the body not as a static category, but as a dynamic construct shaped by social, historical, and emotional imprints. In their works, the participating artists reflect on and imagine both individual and collective body politics. Through their objects and installations, they create spaces of experience for radical vulnerability, connectedness, autonomy, and resistance. This gives rise to an open space for negotiation, in which bodies are not merely represented, but felt, challenged, and celebrated.

“everybody” is an attempt to rethink the body and imagine it in utopian terms.

The exhibition “Everybody” at the Georg Kolbe Museum features works by Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, Eva & Adele, Carolyn Lazard, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, Janne Kummer, Luís Lázaro Matos, and Lauryn Youden. Curated by Eva da Silva Antunes Alves.

Runtime: Sat, 08/08/2026 to Sun, 29/11/2026

Takes place here:

• Georg-Kolbe-Museum