Barbara Lüdde's work deals with marginalized subjects in dissociation with mainstream society. In her elaborate drawings - made with ink on paper - she captures moments in the discovery of identity and gender, the urge to belong satisfied through habits of consumption and the urge to deviate.
Lüdde is mostly presenting single, format filling figures, which depict in filigree details subcultural codes: clothes, poses, accessories, hairstyles, tattoos and patches which cue to the subject's identity. In Bricolage manner, a diverse assemblage of cultural references combine to create a new whole. Barbara Lüdde's is researching the creation of "self" amidst the capitalistic world order - between appropriation and alienation, between inner and outer powers which constantly play on individuals. Her figures come across fearlessly strong and original, but at second glance, deeply fragile, torn between pressures.
Born in Weimar, Barbara Lüdde is living as an artist in Hamburg. Lüdde has recently been included in various Solo- and Group- exhibitions in Bologna, Oakland, Tokyo, Leipzig, Berlin and Hamburg.
Listen to the heliumTALK Podcast with Barbara Lüdde:
(Artist photo: Bettina Theuerkauf)