Artist - Pola Sieverding

Pola Sieverding

Pola Sieverding (b. 1981 in Düsseldorf, Germany) is a visual artist whose practice operates at the intersection of photography, video, and sound. Her work is articulated through an exploration of power and desire, treating the physical body as a vessel for historical narratives capable of deconstructing the contemporary social fabric. For Sieverding, this "fabric" represents the set of invisible rules (traditions, hierarchies, and gender constructions) that shape our interactions and define how attraction and desire operate within both the public and private spheres.

The artist investigates the image of the body as a linguistic alternative to the spoken word. By stripping the human figure of its everyday context, Sieverding reveals how the body’s image is transformed and tensed under the pressures of social structures, turning anatomy into a purely expressive and political element.

At the core of her research lies the concept of "socialised emotions": the psychological and physical transitions that occur when the body oscillates between the act of looking and the state of being observed. By isolating her subjects before the camera, Sieverding constructs a "cinema of the gaze" where the viewer is confronted with their own role as an observer or voyeur. Through the use of bodies and objects charged with eroticism, the artist entangles us in a visual interplay that moves between fascination and repulsion. These images do not pursue a static beauty; on the contrary, they seek to strain the moral codes that restrict human behaviour, questioning the stigmatisation of certain forms of desire.

This premise is powerfully materialised in her series Duende (2022–2023). Within it, the figure of the torero (bullfighter) becomes a stage for heightened performativity. By positioning these protagonists against deep, chiaroscuro backgrounds, Sieverding captures the "performance of just being" that emerges at the threshold of extreme risk and ritual. Here, the body transcends the biological to become a record where pain, aesthetics, and the weight of history converge, invoking the Lorquian notion of a telluric force born from physical and visceral struggle.

Pola Sieverding lives and works in Berlin. A former master-class student of Stan Douglas at the University of the Arts Berlin, she also refined her practice at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the Surikov Institute in Moscow. Her career is marked by significant international milestones, including participation in dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel and exhibitions at the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin, the MAK Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. In 2025, she presents her solo exhibition Hermaphrodite at Kewenig, Palma de Mallorca.

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