Biography:

Cornelia Schleime, born in East Berlin in 1953, trained as a hairdresser, makeup artist and stablehand before she enrolled in painting and printmaking studies at the Hochschule für bildenden Künste in Dresden (1975-80). As an artist and sympathizer of the oppositional East German punk scene, she soon found herself closely watched by the Stasi. Shortly after leaving the art academy, she was banned from exhibiting and became a strong female voice in the East German underground art scene, also using Super-8 film as a new medium of artistic expression. In 1979, she co-founded the art-punk band Zwitschermaschine and performed in various gallery spaces.

In 1984, Schleime left for West Germany after filing an exit visa. Her move came at the cost of leaving her complete artwork behind, which has been lost ever since. Only her Super-8 films, photographs and books with illustrations and drawings were saved.

In West Germany, Schleime’s life as an artist took off in 1989, when she received a one-year fellowship to MoMA’s PS1 in New York. Over the following years, she increasingly received international attention because of her series of expressive and striking portraits.

After German unification, Schleime discovered that a member of her punk band Zwitschermaschine had acted as a Stasi informant. Under the title Bis auf weitere gute Zusammenarbeit, Nr. 7284/85 (1992-93, Until Further Good Cooperation, No. 7284/85), Schleime contrasted the absurd Stasi reports with satiric photographs in surreal settings.

In the 1990s, Cornelia Schleime was involved in international art projects that brought her to Kenya, Brazil, Indonesia and Hawaii. She was awarded the Gabriele Münter, Fred Thieler and Hannah Höch Awards, three of Germany’s most important awards for painting. In 2024, she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Brandenburg minister president.

Cornelia Schleime is one of Germany’s most looked-after artists and has exhibited at prestigious museums. Her work is also part of the ongoing touring exhibition Multiple Realities that opened at the Walker Art Center in 2023.

In 2008, Schleime published her autobiographical novel Weit fort (Far Away) and in 2010 a collection of 12 illustrated short stories, Das Paradis kann warten (The Paradise Can Wait). Schleime illustrated dreams recorded by Martin Walser, published as Das Traumbuch: Postkarten aus dem Schlaf (2022, The Dream Book: Postcards Written Asleep).

On the occasion of Schleime’s first solo exhibition, Ohne Lippen sind die Zähne kalt (Without Lips the Teeth Are Cold) at the Berlin Galerie Judin in 2024, the Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König published the first volume of Schleime’s catalog raisonné, Cornelia Schleime: Werkverzeichnis Vol. 1 - Performte Fotografie und Super-8 Filme in der DDR 1978-1984 (2014, Cornelia Schleime: Catalog Raisonné Vol.1: Performed Photography and Super-8 Films in the GDR, 1978-1984).