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Creative journey to South Yemen

Topic: Travels
Periods:
  • 1983
Artists:
  • Sigrid Noack
  • Abed Abdi
  • Lea Grundig
  • Gerhard Bondzin
  • Sami Hakki
Artist Sigrid Noack speaks about works she created in the context of her trip to South Yemen in a video interview.
Interview with Sigrid Noack in her studio in Guben, 29.06.2022

The artist Sigrid Noack (born 1947) trained first as a bookseller, but then decided to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden with Herbert Kunze and Gerhard Bondzin. In 1972 she graduated in mural painting and five years later became a master student at the Berlin Academy of Arts with Lea Grundig, with whom she had been acquainted since her student days. During private meetings with Lea Grundig, she also met the Iraqi artist Sami Hakki and the Israeli-Palestinian artist Abed Abdi, who were likewise studying mural painting. After her studies, Sigrid Noack took over the painting circle of the chemical fiber factory in her hometown of Guben. In 1983, she received permission to travel to the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen to see the work of a friendship brigade of the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ) and to record her impressions artistically. During her seven week stay in South Yemen she made various sketches, which after her return to Guben served as the basis for many other paintings about the trip. In 1987/88, she executed a large-format triptych on the subject of Brigade der Freundschaft ("Brigade of Friendship") on behalf of the FDJ, which was presumably hung in the Jugendhochschule Bogensee or in the building of the Zentralrat der FDJ in East Berlin. Today it is in the holdings of the Museum für Utopie und Alltag (Beeskow).

Sigrid Noack, Triptych Brigade der Freundschaft in der DVR Jemen, 1987. Photo: Kunstarchiv Beeskow.

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