Lily Greenham: An Art of Living

During her lifetime, the artist Lily Greenham (1924–2001) managed to stir up controversy with her radically interdisciplinary approach. She worked with a diverse array of genres – from painting and collaging to performance art, concrete poetry and sound art – and influenced entirely new ones. For example, she experimented with digital sampling long before commercial samplers were available on the market. In commemoration of her 100th anniversary, the Badischer Kunstverein is presenting an international retrospective featuring the broad range of Greenham’s work for the first time. In cooperation with curators, researchers and contemporary artists, the exhibition will shed light on her pioneering role in many current art trends. 

On account of World War II and her parent’s Polish-Jewish background, Lily Greenham sought refuge in various countries and, as a result, learned to speak eight languages fluently. She mixed these into her performances of concrete poetry which she presented on tour through Europe in the 1960s. In 1972, while in London, she began writing her own poetry. In a recording studio, she combined various languages with sounds and distorted them, making it almost impossible to distinguish human utterances from electronic sounds. And thus, a new genre was born, so-called “Lingual Music”. 

Greenham’s acoustic pieces are the focus of the exhibition project. Many other art forms, with which she experimented during her career, will also be presented, e.g. collages, computer graphics and op-art, along with manuscripts and letters from her estate that are stored in the Special Collections of Goldsmiths University in London, one of the exhibition’s project partners. Inspired by Greenham’s approach “to get in touch”, the project organisers have developed discussion formats and workshops which promote exchange and participation. The art publishing platform “Bricks from the Kiln” will present pioneering works from the Lily Greenham archive and create an audio edition in cooperation with contemporary writers.

Artistic director: Anja Casser
Curators: Alexandru Balgiu, James Bulley, Andrew Walsh-Lister
Artist: Lily Greenham
Exhibition: Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe: 7 Mar. – 26 May 2024