"Frau Lisa Kahlo" (2017) by Susanne Wawra is, in many ways, a complete work of art and it fits into a framework of recurring themes for the artist, in a combination of memories, family, duality of the person, human interiority and history.

Susanne Wawra (b. 1980) is a German artist, who grew up in the German Democratic Republic before the fall of the Berlin Wall, therefore in the part of Berlin under the control of the Soviet Union. Susanne Wawra is a visual artist and a poet. She moved to Dublin in 2007, where she later studied at the National College of Art and Design. Over the years Wawra has participated in several exhibitions, both as part of a group show and solo exhibitions. As for the group exhibitions, we can recall here in particular "A Vague Anxiety", a 2019 exhibition organized and held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin (IMMA). For this occasion Wawra presented a series of works, some of which featured her mother; Wawra questioned the concept of memory, family and identity and, above all, of an identity that is not only linked to the essence of being a mother. 

As for Wawra’s solo shows, two exhibitions are particularly relevant, of which both titles are German words and have a broader meaning: the 2022 Remmidemmi exhibition at The Custom House Studios in Westport and the 2019 solo exhibition at the Olivier Cornet Gallery, entitled "Sitzfleisch", to which the painting "Frau Lisa Kahlo" also belongs.

In her artistic practice, Wawra uses different materials and artistic techniques: she continuously oscillates between the abstract and the figurative, with brushstrokes that are almost expressionist for the purity of the feeling they emanate and yet also inserting fabric, photographs and black and white prints, taken from family albums or even using objects and materials recovered through antique markets. As Wawra herself pointed out in a December 2020 interview for the "Contatto" project -a solidarity project between artists that was implemented following the loneliness caused by the Covid-19 pandemic crisis– her desire to move to Ireland was also partly motivated by the need to escape her past, to escape her childhood in East Germany, where as a child she had formed an identity closely connected to a nation and to a culture that no longer exist and that has led so many people to try to rebuild their sense of self. However, she later realized that, with her artistic practice, she brought East Germany and her personal background with her to Dublin and this is extremely noticeable in most of her work.

In her artworks, Wawra shows a deep empathy and sensitivity not only for history, but for the people who lived through it and, in particular, for her family. It is interesting to point out here that Wawra does not think of her family only as such, not only as individuals defined by their origins but as floating identities, fluid and waiting to be explored.

As already mentioned above, Frau Lisa Kahlo is part of a series of works entitled "Sitzfleisch". Sitzfleisch is a German term that literally means: "sitting meat" or "sitting flesh". In German, this term refers to a person's behind. Sitzfleisch, however, also means much more, it is almost a state of mind: it means stamina, endurance, perseverance. It refers to the concept of enduring through difficult times and still sitting proud, upright and ready for whatever is yet to come.

Wawra also shared in an interview for The Gloss magazine (Penny McCormick, The Gloss Magazine, Thursday 21 May 2020) how in a way in Frau Lisa Kahlo she played with images that oscillate between the metaphorical and the literal, with her grandmother as a young woman sitting perseveringly and graciously in a woven chair. In a palette of colors that oscillates between warm and cold, between a calm beige and a distant gray which are crossed by free brushstrokes that do not aim to reconstruct something, it is as if Wawra – as she did before that with her mother – is questioning the identity of her grandmother, in all her nuances and contradictions. In Frau Lisa Kahlo, the observer can see multiple subjects: a young and beautiful woman, musical notes that appear blurry and the face of the grandmother that reappears broken down in four different points, as if to emphasize a multiple identity, which cannot be limited to being someone else's grandmother. This is the reason why the painting is not titled with a term of endearment or a family name. In this work, the protagonist is not a mother, a grandmother or, rather, not only: she’s an identity going through the continuous process “of becoming”, defined (at least partially) by passions, desires, nuances and possibilities of what she might be. 

With this work of art, Wawra takes the observes back in time, inevitably making anyone who sees Frau Lisa Kahlo ponder about the power of history, memories and the expression of the individual self. 

Annalaura Peveri, January 2024