Bonn

Feminists are still belittled – but, what about a man who fights for women’s rights? The Cologne artist Wolfgang Klaus Maria Friedrich has plenty of experience in that.

Women’s Museum. The Berlin artists’ group of the same name is playing the title role. A good thirty years ago, the group occupied a dilapidated chocolate factory in Berlin-Kreuzberg and turned it into an alternative arts and culture centre. The exhibition in Bonn looks at the women’s movement in art.

In addition to all of the installations and objects created by women, space was made for the works of just one man. On the ground floor, near the entrance, hang four photo silk-screen pictures reworked in chocolate by the Cologne artist Wolfgang Klaus Maria Friedrich, who gives himself the pseudonym WKMF. Each of these four silk-screens deals with women’s themes and bears a political message. In front of the wall is an installation: chocolate fountains from which dark chocolate (Herrenschokolade or “gentlemen’s chocolate” is another name for dark chocolate) bubbles, served with penis-shaped biscuits.

This chocolate installation is called In aller Munde or “on everyone’s lips.” The message behind it is the fight against child abusers. The theme of the installation is no coincidence – the Cologne information office against child abuse is called Zartbitter (another word for dark or “bittersweet” chocolate). “The problem is often pushed aside, when we allow the paedophiles to simply board a plane to Thailand. So that others have the problem and not us,” the artist says in disgust.

WKMF wants to get people thinking with this chocolate installation, “Because the people don’t tackle the topic. Especially not men. That’s why I am happy to be here in the Women’s Museum and feel very comfortable here.”

Hostility from other men

Of course, Friedrich is eyed suspiciously by other men, especially in the art scene. “My artist colleagues look askance at me because in their eyes, I have taken up a women’s position,” he says in an interview with the Deutsche Welle. “Yet, I am really a man and am doing it from my profound convictions. When I see the inequalities that predominate, I have to speak out against them. That is my main task as an artist. It is a constant struggle and I do it every day with great pleasure.”

WKMF is convinced that if more women in the world had a say, circumstances such as the financial crisis would not happen. “We’re all familiar with the old adage: It’s a man’s world. At work, men still have a far easier time of it. If something doesn’t change there soon, then the women will not only go home frustrated, but the entire economy loses something.”

The burly man who loves women

The 55-year-old artist does not want to be pigeonholed: He is not homosexual; he was once married, and has two adult children. He is a “tower of a man, a burly two metres tall,” as described by a gallery owner and friend – and yet he is a staunch feminist. “I love women and I have a feminist agenda, but I am a man,” he repeatedly stresses. “I want everything to be shared fairly – fifty-fifty.” Nonetheless, his circle of friends is made up more of men than women. “Still, when it comes to friendship, gender does not matter much to me. There are women who can drink like men, and there are men who are niminy-piminy.”

Of all people, this “dreamboat” is now present in the midst of an exhibition dedicated to the rebellion of women against the dominant world of men. This, too, is a little provocation, for with his works, WKMF aims to point out grievances.

Not only the chocolate fountains with the male genitals have a signalling effect, but the silk-screens in the background on the wall as well: women’s portraits from various milieus. A beggar with a child on the street, next to them a mother and child portrait like an idyllic advertisement from the 1950s. In addition, the feminist painter asks: “What gender is God?” It is a question that has confounded many, the answer to which one perhaps can approach best through art.