A blink of an Eye Cornelia Schleime

Cornelia Schleime will receive this year’s Hannah-Höch-Preis from the State of Berlin for her life’s work. The artist, born in East Berlin in 1953, studied printmaking and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts (HfBK) in Dresden from 1975 to 1980. In her undergraduate days, she belonged to a milieu of young artists who formed a counter-movement to official GDR art policy. The artists pursued new experimental paths and devised alternative presentation formats in studios and private homes. In the early 1980s, Cornelia Schleime drew, painted and wrote poetry, explored performance art and eventually began making films. Her broad definition of art and her unconventional works and shows resulted in 1981 in an exhibition ban. In 1984, after several applications to leave the country, she moved from East to West Berlin. Almost her entire oeuvre up to that date remained in the GDR and has disappeared.