Ulrike Rosenbach

Ulrike Rosenbach (*1943, Hildesheim, Germany) studied sculpture at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1964 to 1970 with Norbert Kricke and Joseph Beuys. Her studies with Joseph Beuys led to her first contacts with the happening and Fluxus scene of the 1970s. In 1972, Ulrike Rosenbach began to work with video as an artistic means of expression and produced her first video live-actions. Her early performances, in which she used closed-circuit video, gained international recognition and made her the most renowned German video artist.

Ulrike Rosenbach’s expansive oeuvre is synonymous with the history of performance and video art. From the 1970s onwards, she focused on the female body as an interface between nature, culture, and technology, pioneering (eco)feminist performance practice and applying newly available recording and playback technologies in her work. Within and between different works, she created a continuous feedback loop between performance as a live event and liveness as a recorded event, from which new installations and video works would often emerge.

From 1973 to 1976 Rosenbach traveled several times to the USA and took on various teaching assignments, including feminist art and video art at the California Institute of Arts (CalArts) in Los Angeles. In 1976 she founded the “School for Creative Feminism” in Cologne, which existed until 1982. As a political artist, she actively advocates equal rights for women artists in the international art world. In 1977 and 1987, she participated in documenta 6 and 8, and in 1979, she took part in the Sydney Biennale. Teaching assignments and guest professorships took her to various European institutions, including the Berlin University of the Arts and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. From 1989 to 2007, Rosenbach was professor of Media Art at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar in Saarbrücken, Germany, and from 1991 to 1993 she served as the university’s rector.

Her work has received numerous international and national awards and grants and has been presented in major exhibitions worldwide. A comprehensive retrospective, titled »Ulrike Rosenbach. today is tomorrow«, was held at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe in 2023/24. On occasion of this exhibition, the ZKM published »Ulrike Rosenbach. Witnesses«, a monograph on the artist’s works in English, edited by Hendrik Folkerts.

Ulrike Rosenbach lives and works in the Rhineland, Germany.