On Everyone’s Lips

Mouth, lips, tongue, and teeth; speech, pain, and screaming; eating, devouring, spitting, and spewing; lust and passion: The oral cavity is a literally stimu­la­ting bodily zone. Not only have science and medicine always been involved in the explo­ra­tion of the oral cavity, but also art and cultural history, from antiquity to the present. The Kunst­mu­seum Wolfsburg traces this broadly diver­si­fied path of the history of the motif within the frame­works the exhibi­tion On Everyone’s Lips. From Pieter Bruegel to Cindy Sherman. With over 250 works of art by, among others, Albrecht Dürer, Pablo Picasso, Max Klinger, Marina Abramović, Andy Warhol, and Louise Bourgeois, it is the most compre­hen­sive exhibi­tion on the theme of the oral cavity in art in Germany to date.

The broadly conceived exhibi­tion is devoted to monster mouths (Alfred Kubin) and vampire bites (Edvard Munch), considers the mouth as a Hellmouth and gateway to the “world-inner­space” (Pieter Bruegel). Dental culture, in turn, is illumi­nated in a variety of ways, from the tooth breaker in Jan Steen’s work and the depiction of the patron saint of dentists, Apollonia, in the work of Andy Warhol to tooth jewelry from non-European cultures. Mona Hatoum penetrates into the esophagus, while artists such as Man Ray and Anselmo Fox capture their breath in glass, soap, or chewing gum bubbles. And finally, the aesthe­tics of the lips, heigh­tened in the kiss and oral libido, is a subject that Wolfgang Tillmans, Natalia LL, Picasso, Marilyn Minter, and many others address with their works in the exhibi­tion. On Everyone’s Lips comprises paintings, sculp­tures, instal­la­tions, photo­graphs, drawings, prints, and video art, juxta­posed with indivi­dual exhibits from ethno­lo­gical and scien­tific collec­tions, film and adver­ti­sing, music and literature.

The exhibi­tion is accom­pa­nied by a compre­hen­sive, richly illus­trated publi­ca­tion. With specia­lized thematic essays, it offers not only in-depth content, but also extends beyond the exhibi­tion itself. The mouth is thus also examined with regard to its various compon­ents and capabi­li­ties within the fields of cinematic history, ethnology, literary studies, and archi­tec­ture. With contri­bu­tions by Andreas Beitin, Hartmut Böhme, Horst Bredekamp & Kolja Thurner, Roland Garve, Birte Hinrichsen, Olaf Knellessen, Harald Lemke, Karin Leonhard, Jürgen Müller, Uta Ruhkamp, Marcus Stiglegger, and Ulrike Vedder. Hatje Cantz Publis­hers, separate German and English editions, each ca. 350 pages, with 350 illus­tra­tions. Available for 45 euros in the museum shop or at kunstmuseum.de/shop.

The exhibi­tion On Everyone’s Lips has been curated by Uta Ruhkamp and developed in coope­ra­tion with the cultural scholar Hartmut Böhme and the dentist Beate Slominski.

The exhibi­tion and accom­panying publi­ca­tion are generously supported by the Cultural Founda­tion of the German Federal States.

Curator
Uta Ruhkamp

Curato­rial Assis­tance
Birte Hinrichsen
Elena Engelbrechter
Regine Epp