Sigrid Pawelke

Pawelke has come to specialize in art projects in the urban realm and the ecological sphere. She worked with artists such as Lucy and Jorge Orta, Jochen Gerz and Michelangelo Pistoletto at institutions as at PS1 Center of Contemporary Art in New York, the Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella and is especially interested in the social and ecological relevance and impact of her projects and interventions. In 2020 during the nomadic European biennial Manifesta 13 in Marseille, Pawelke curated five round tables on art, society and ecology as part of the Infinite Village by Cora von Zezschwitz and Tilman.

Sigrid Pawelke is a German curator and a performance and art historian, regarded as one of the leading experts of the Bauhaus Stage and its influences on the arts in North America. In 2015 she was part of the Black Mountain show at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum of Contemporary Art Berlin, contributing fifteen film interviews of former Black Mountain students (such as Ati Gropius, choreographer Anna Halprin and Yvonne Rainer). In 2019 she created with Dimitri Chamblas “Unlimited Bodies”, a seven-day interdisciplinary experiment inspired by the radical pedagogies of the Bauhaus for the biennial “PERFORMA 19” in New York.

Born in Germany, she currently lives in France where she taught art history at the School of Visual Arts in Aix-en-Provence from 2011 until 2016. She has worked with artists Jochen Gerz and Michelangelo Pistoletto and has organized workshops with choreographers VA Wölfl, Philippe Decouflé, Angelin Preljocaj, Rachid Ouramdane, Marcos Morau, Niv Sheinfeld and Oren Laor, among others.

Pawelke has overseen projects and produced programs for the Fondation de France, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, Alfred Toepfer Foundation, and the Federal Agency for Civic Education Germany. Between 2006 and 2010 she initiated and developed the program "New Patrons" (Nouveaux Commanditaires) in Germany. In collaboration with six high-profile curators and major art institutions (i.e. Deichtorhallen Hamburg) she advanced the European platform "New Patrons" from France, Belgium and Italy into Germany with the aim of initiating art of-and-for civil society.

She received her Doctor of Art History and Performance Studies (PhD) in 2000 for her thesis entitled "Influences of the Bauhaus Stage in the USA". It investigates the connection between the Bauhaus stage, avant-garde performance and Postmodern dance in the US, focusing particularly on aesthetic and pedagogical aspects. Pawelke examines the interdisciplinary ideas fostered by the Bauhaus, that were expressed in the programs at Black Mountain College, and that led for instance to the emergence of John Cage's first "Happening". Her work was the first study to consider the relationship between the European Bauhaus and the American experimental stage in rigorous scholarly detail.