Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig

In 2024, the MdbK began its façade project with the series Tenseness by Cihan Çakmak, followed by Katharina Schreiter’s Membrane. Roxana Rios’s Ode to Eris marks the project’s third year.

In the series Ode to Eris that was specially commissioned by the MdbK, Roxana Rios (*1994 Hanover) engages with selected artworks from the permanent exhibition and reinterprets them in the form of photographic works with performative elements. Rios’s artistic practice is characterized by its critical treatment of narratives as they developed through history and, in particular, of the connections between image and knowledge production – ultimately, it raises the question concerning how certain image patterns in portrait painting such as gender stereotypes have been, and still are, perpetuated and reinforced. Roxana Rios regards the body as “construct, material and representative within social orders”.

Roxana Rios studied photography with Heidi Specker at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (HGB) and with Juergen Teller and Katja Eydel at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg. Rios then studied performing arts with Isabel Lewis at the HGB. The artist lives and works in Leipzig.

Ode to Eris will be presented in the form of three large-format banners on the façade of the MdbK and several photographic interventions in the permanent exhibition. To mark the occasion of the project, a signed and numbered edition with all the motifs from the series will appear as a limited edition (+ 1 artist’s proof) in a 40 × 30 cm format in a handmade box. The edition will be available at the MdbK.