The project "Power of the Kitsch" deals with different approaches to feminism in design and aesthetics in general. The project was created by Hannah Friedrich ( she/her) and Jay Steinert ( they/them) as part of a freelance project in the "Graphic Design" professorship at the Bauhaus University Weimar under the supervision of Tamara Knapp and made possible by the university's women's promotion funds.
For the research, they read various literature on the topics of patriarchy and colonialism in Western aesthetics and reflected on their own socialisation: What do we consider beautiful? How do we evaluate the quality of art? What criteria do we use to divide design into art and craft and what influence do sexism and Eurocentrism have on our perception? What power do we have as designers?
The zines were featured in the exhibition "The F*Word - Guerilla Girls und feministische Grafikdesign" at Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg in 2023. @mkghamburg
We exhibited the project in October 2022 in an old Kiosk in Weimar called Kiosk.6. There we presented our artistic approaches to the topics and sold the zines and posters we had produced.
