Ev­ery two to three years, an artist is in­vit­ed to cre­ate a new work for the Mu­se­um Lud­wig’s largest wall, lo­cat­ed in front of the main stair­case. Schultze Pro­jects pays ho­mage to artist cou­ple Ber­nard Schultze and Ur­su­la (Schultze-Bluhm), whose artis­tic es­tates are ma­n­aged by the Mu­se­um Lud­wig and com­me­m­o­rat­ed with this se­ries, which was ini­ti­at­ed in 2017.

For the fourth edi­tion of Schultze Pro­jects, artist Kre­si­ah Muk­wazhi (b. 1992 in Harare, Zim­bab­we) has cre­at­ed a new mu­ral. Muk­wazhi of­ten sources pie­ces of used cloth­ing or cloth that she sews to­gether and paints to cre­ate works that ad­dress male vi­o­lence against wo­m­en in her home coun­try. She views art as a form of protest and self-em­pow­er­ment, as well as a start­ing point for en­cour­ag­ing and sup­port­ing wo­m­en. Muk­wazhi un­der­s­tands her artis­tic prac­tice as vi­su­al ac­tivism. Her in­s­tal­la­tions, videos, per­for­mances, sculp­tures, and tex­tile col­lages vi­su­al­ize the ex­pe­ri­ences of wo­m­en who face sex­u­al­iza­tion, dis­crim­i­na­tion, and margi­nal­iza­tion in male-dom­i­nat­ed so­ci­eties. Fo­cus­ing on the body as the battle­field of struc­tu­ral op­pres­sion and abus­es of pow­er, she em­ploys used ac­ces­sories, wigs, and items of cloth­ing, such as pet­ti­coats, that are di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the fe­male body and so­cial­ly con­struct­ed no­tions of femi­nini­ty.

For Cologne, in a de­par­ture from her pre­vi­ous, pre­dom­i­nant­ly fig­u­ra­tive work, Muk­wazhi has cre­at­ed an ab­s­tract piece, which at first glance ap­pears to be a vast monochrome. A clos­er in­spec­tion re­veals that the work is com­prised of in­nu­mer­ous straps and fas­ten­ers from thou­sands of pre­vi­ous­ly worn bras Mea­sur­ing over thir­teen me­ters long and three me­ters high, this is the artist’s most am­bi­tious tex­tile piece to date.

Through th­ese ma­te­rials, ex­port­ed by in­dus­trial­ized na­tions as used cloth­ing to Afri­can coun­tries, Muk­wazhi calls at­ten­tion to en­dur­ing colo­nial con­di­tions while cre­at­ing a monu­men­tal work that, in the words of the artist, “ex­press­es the pow­er of fe­male col­lec­tiv­i­ty” and aims to “re­claim the sa­cred na­ture of wo­m­en, who should be seen and cele­brat­ed as roy­al be­ings”. Her ob­ser­va­tions of gen­der-based vi­o­lence and sex­u­al ex­ploi­ta­tion in Harare’s nightlife, in­clud­ing con­ver­sa­tions she con­duct­ed with sex work­ers, are in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the work. Al­so in­clud­ed are ref­er­ences to Afri­can cul­tures in which wo­m­en pos­sess an im­mense spir­i­tu­al func­tion and a sa­cred con­nec­tion to the ground. In th­ese cul­tures, the ri­t­u­al act of strip­ping away one’s cloth­es car­ries par­tic­u­lar sig­ni­f­i­cance, em­pha­siz­ing the strength and un­re­lent­ing re­sis­tance of wo­m­en against all forms of op­pres­sion. Muk­wazhi’s new work pays tribute to the pow­er of fe­male eman­ci­pa­tion, per­ceived by some as threat­en­ing. As the artist ex­plains, “This work tries to re­gain the pow­er and dig­ni­ty of wo­m­en in our so­ci­e­ty to­day: the ex­clud­ed ones, the ones who have re­belled against the op­pres­sive pow­ers of the pa­triarch and were la­beled ‘dif­fi­cult’ be­cause they de­cid­ed to raise their voic­es, as well as the ac­tivists, sex work­ers, artists, out­siders, and wo­m­en who protest in male-dom­i­nat­ed work­ing en­vi­ron­ments”.

The work’s ti­tle, Shan­duko nhe­ma, means both “Black revin­di­ca­tion” and “Black lies” in Sho­na, Muk­wazhi’s na­tive tongue. The lat­ter can be in­ter­pret­ed as a ref­er­ence to the ra­cist ide­olo­gies used by Eu­ro­pean pow­ers to sub­s­tan­ti­ate their sup­posed cul­tu­r­al su­pe­ri­or­i­ty over non-white peo­ple, which cserved as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the col­oniza­tion of Afri­ca. The artist her­self ex­plains: “In the work that I cre­at­ed for Schultze Pro­jects, I chal­lenge the neg­a­tive no­tions that are as­so­ci­at­ed with the col­or black: evil (black mag­ic), dark­ness, and be­ing an out­sider (black sheep)—and I pre­sent it as a form of the em­pow­er­ment of those that it rep­re­sents”.

Kre­si­ah Muk­wazhi most re­cent­ly pre­sent­ed a sig­ni­f­i­cant new work at Art Basel Un­limit­ed 2024. In 2023, she had so­lo ex­hi­bi­tions at Nott­ing­ham Con­tem­po­rary and the Vien­na Se­ces­sion. In 2022, her works were pre­sent­ed in the Zim­bab­we Pav­ilion at the Venice Bien­nale.

(Cu­ra­tor: Yil­maz Dziewior)

From 1968 on, Ber­nard Schultze and his wife Ur­su­la (Schultze-Bluhm) lived and worked as artists in Cologne. For de­cades they were a fix­ture of the ci­ty’s cul­tu­r­al life and had a par­tic­u­lar­ly close re­la­tion­ship with the Mu­se­um Lud­wig. The mu­se­um now holds a large part of their artis­tic es­tate. Ber­nard Schultze was one of the pi­oneers of Art In­formel in Ger­many with his works from the ear­ly 1950s. The large-scale for­mat was a cen­tral as­pect of his lat­er work. It rep­re­sents the sub­s­tan­tial ref­er­ence point for the artists in­vit­ed to par­ti­ci­pate in Schultze Pro­jects.

Pre­vi­ous artists:

  • Schultze Pro­jects #1 (2017): Wade Guy­ton.
  • Schultze Pro­jects #2 (2019): Av­ery Singer.
  • Schultze Pro­jects #3 (2021): Min­er­va Cue­vas.