Lynn Hershman Leeson
The Novalis Hotel
19 May – 17 June 18
Address: Hotel Novalis, Novalisstraße 5, 10115 Berlin-Mitte
Opening hours: Wed–Sun 11 am – 7 pm, Thu 11 am – 9 pm
Free admission
U6 Oranienburger Tor / Tram 12, M5 Torstraße/U Oranienburger Tor
No wheelchair access
Public program
Lynn Hershman Leeson in conversation with Lutz Roewer
followed by a film screening of Teknolust
17 June 18, 5 pm
Gropius Bau, Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963 Berlin
Admission: 5 € / reduced 3 € (Ticket)
On the occasion of her solo exhibition First Person Plural in summer 2018 at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, American artist Lynn Hershman Leeson (born 1941, Cleveland, US) revisits her iconic installation The Dante Hotel in the form of a new commission entitled The Novalis Hotel.
The Dante Hotel (1972–73) was one of her early site-specific works that marked the beginning of her work around the character Roberta Breitmore. The artist developed this alter ego over many years in private and public performances, ultimately leading her to produce her visionary works that investigate the relationships between humans and technology, identity and surveillance.
Identity is no longer a body shaped by societal conventions, but it is a generative reproduction that is both disembodied and directly tied to our genetic material and the entities that control its surveillance. For The Novalis Hotel, the artist presents an inverted version of The Dante Hotel. Hershman Leeson allows the visitors not only a glimpse into the life of the enigmatic women who is staying at the hotel but also the traces left behind by the visiting audience will undergo forensic analysis while its results will be presented in a conversation between Lynn Hershman Leeson and the forensic scientist Lutz Roewer on the last day of the installation (June 17, 2018).
Curator: Anna Gritz
Assistant curator and project management: Cathrin Mayer