Alice Creischer

Alice Creischer refers to the words of Kurt Tucholski, a journalist and writer of Jewish descent from Szczecin, who wrote in the 1930s: “Kiss the fascists wherever you meet them.” The artist kisses with her lipsticked lips the pages of Bild, the most popular populist tabloid in Europe. The first version of the piece was created in 1992 during xenophobic attacks in Rostock-Lichtenhagen—the biggest attacks on migrants in Germany since the end of World War II (the invasion of a refugee centre by a group of neo-Nazis, armed with Molotov cocktails and baseball bats, was watched approvingly by a crowd of three thousand people). Creischer recreated the same work a quarter of a century later by planting one hundred fifty kisses on a copy of Bild (containing reports of “migrants on every school football pitch”), published during anti-refugee riots in Chemnitz.

Alice Creischer (b. in 1960 in Gerolstein, Germany) – politically engaged artist, writer and theorist working with themes of globalization, the history of capitalism and the ethics of work, among other fields. Creischer creates collages, drawings, sculptures and installations. She works collectively, often as a duo with the German artist and activist Andreas Siekmann.