Supported by the Goethe-Institut
Paul B. Preciado is a guest of the Goethe-Institut
Lorenza Böttner: Requiem for the Norm is the first North American presentation of the work of Chilean/German artist Lorenza Böttner. Born Ernst Lorenz Böttner in Chile in 1959, at eight he lost both his arms in an accident. Institutionalized in Germany, where he moved with his mother for treatment, he rejected prosthetics intended to compensate for his supposed disability. In art school, he started identifying as female and assumed the name Lorenza. Although her career spanned just sixteen years, Lorenza Böttner created over 200 individual works, painting with her feet and mouth and using dance, photography, street performance, drawing, and installation to celebrate the complexity of embodiment and gender expression. Casting herself as a ballerina, a mother, a young man with glass arms, a Greek statue, Böttner’s work is irreverent and hedonistic, filled with the artist’s joy in her own body.
Presented in collaboration with Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart and La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona
Curated by writer and philosopher Paul B. Preciado, one of the leading thinkers in the study of gender and sexual politics. An Honors Graduate and Fulbright Fellow, he earned a M.A. in Philosophy and Gender Theory at the New School for Social Research in New York, where he studied with Agnes Heller and Jacques Derrida. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Theory of Architecture from Princeton University.
His first book, Counter-Sexual Manifesto (Columbia University Press) was acclaimed by critics as “the red book of queer theory” and became a key reference for European queer and trans activism.
He has been Head of Research of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA) 2011 to 2014 and he has taught Philosophy of the Body and Transfeminist Theory at Université Paris VIII-Saint Denis and at NYU. From 2014 to 2017 he was Curator of Public Programs of documenta 14 (Kassel/Athens). Paul B. Preciado lives between Athens, Paris, and Barcelona.
Opening reception
Saturday, January 25, 5-7pm
University of Toronto Art Centre
Extended exhibition hours from 7pm-12am at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery and the University of Toronto Art Centre for the Night of Ideas.
Tuesdays at 2pm beginning January 28, 2020
Meet at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
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