Sibylle Fendt (Almost) Everyone Anyone

A member of the photo agency Ostkreuz, Berlin photographer Sibylle Fendt is renowned for her medium-format analog work. In her first North American exhibition, the Goethe-Institut presents Fendt’s latest portraits, offering up exuberant and feisty encounters with artists and creators including Peaches, Pussy Riot, Kis’ Keya, Danielle de Picciotto, and dozens more. Fendt calls this simultaneously subjective and diverse series “a mixtape of my personal heroes.”

Fendt is compelled to approach artists whom she appreciates for their signature style & gutsy choices—all are united by a feminist attitude. (Almost) Everyone Anyone uses an intercultural lens to consider women’s rights and the representation of faces and bodies through photography. “My images show personalities, not genders,” says Fendt, presenting a range of extraordinary positions and perspectives that inspire viewers to reflect upon and perhaps reframe their own. “The deeper I dove into gender questions and the works of feminist artists, the clearer it became that I did not want to focus on the female gender, but on feminist positions.”

In 2021, Fendt, a former student of noted German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, began portraying artists, actors, authors, musicians, DJs, and filmmakers whom she admires for their unique expressiveness and unwillingness to compromise. This group includes a multitude of radical and transgressive artists, including Chilean DJ Chica Paula, Danish pornographer Goodyn Green, and experimental cellist Martina Bertoni, eventually resulting in Fendt’s most recent photographs of Russian agitprop group Pussy Riot.

The works in Fendt’s Toronto solo show draw from her series ARTIST*PORTRAITS, which began as a response to staged experimental portraits by female Bauhaus photographers such as Marta Hoepffner. Fendt was drawn to her predecessors’ ability to portray their subjects as both grand and delicate, colourful and quirky, simple and complex, staged but candid, playing with close-ups and long shots. She reflects that the series “… is an invitation to see all people. My wish is that ‘We can all play passionately in the orchestra of life,’ to quote Shirin Abedi’s words.”

Two full-colour print publications, including images and statements by the artist’s subjects, accompany the ongoing project. “I don’t think I’ve been this productive in a long time,” Fendt explains. “No sooner had I finished producing the first slipcase—no, actually already during that time—I started to meet new artists. Within a year, I got to know 52 artists—52 enriching encounters, 52 admirable personalities, 52 role models. Many of them have recommended other people to me, whom I should definitely photograph as well. So, it can go on and on. I already have enough names for the third slipcase. I just can’t stop.”

The exhibition’s title is derived from multimedia producer Sky Deep’s statement accompanying her portrait in Fendt’s series which, although addressing music, is equally applicable to photography and portraiture: “It would be nice if the musical palette of modern listeners and dancers deepened in complexity in a way that enhances their DNA and creates new movements they never knew were possible. Music can MAKE almost everyone anyone—if there is willingness to broaden the taste of ALL the senses.”

Curated by Jutta Brendemühl

Presented by the Goethe-Institut with CONTACT and Art Metropole, and supported by the Berlin Senate Department of Culture