Keike Twisselmann

Keike Twisselmann is a German born multilaterally creating artist who lived and studied in Belfast during the 1990s and continues to perform and exhibit her art throughout Northern Ireland and Europe. Her body of work includes painting, poetry of mind, film, performance art, automatic writing, philosophy, politics and the laws of nature and humanity: noise and silence. In 1989, she moved from Berlin to Belfast to complete a BA degree in Fine Art from the University of Ulster where she graduated in 1992. She later attained her MA, also in Fine Art, from the University of Ulster in 1996. It was during this period studying and living in Northern Ireland that she performed her art in cultural venues across the province as well as in public spaces, including performances in Cornmarket in the heart of Belfast city centre. In 1994, she became the director of Catalyst Arts, a voluntary artist-led organisation based on collaboration and community also located in Belfast. Now based in Germany, Keike Twisselmann continues to regularly exhibit her work in Northern Ireland.

This online archive contains material kindly donated by Keike Twisselmann for the extraORDINARYwomen project. The collection consists of photographs taken during her performance piece A Public Execution (1992) in Belfast’s Cornmarket; photographs of an exhibition of her paintings on display at the Linen Hall Library in 2009; oil on canvas paintings as part of a 2015 Orpheus exhibition in Kleve, Germany, and a selection of copper plate etchings completed during 2020 whilst in lockdown in Berlin during the Covid-19 pandemic. Two performance art films are also available to consult at the Linen Hall Library by appointment: Please keep the door shut, as they tend to come in and slaughter us (1989) and The sleep of reason produces war (1994).