Narrating Violence: A Comic-Exhibition at Sigmund Freud Museum Explores Critical Depictions Through Art

This special exhibition explores the critical portrayal of violence in comics, featuring works by over 30 international artists. Across four thematic sections, it delves into narrative strategies and their psychoanalytic relevance, examining depictions of sexualized violence, coming of age, the Shoah, and war and migration.

From October 20, 2023, to April 8, 2024, the Sigmund Freud Museum presents 'Narrating Violence. A Comic-Exhibition,' an in-depth look at the manifold ways comics critically engage with violence. The exhibition showcases selected works by more than 30 international artists, covering a broad spectrum from the Shoah and personal experiences of violence to current conflicts and the treatment of refugees and the oppressed. The exhibition is divided into four sections: "Sexualized and Gender-Based Violence," "Coming of Age," "Shoah," and "War, Fleeing, and Migration," offering insights into the narrative techniques of the medium and their surprising productivity for psychoanalysis. Featured artists include Alison Bechdel, Anke Feuchtenberger, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Ulli Lust, Rutu Modan, Joe Sacco, Marjane Satrapi, Art Spiegelman, and Barbara Yelin, among others. The exhibition highlights how comics, similar to Freudian dream work processes like displacement and condensation, express emotions in alienated and exaggerated ways, embodying sensations, pain, and aggression on depicted bodies. Their diverse methods and aesthetic possibilities for portraying experiences of violence make them suitable for revealing the repressed and tabooed, serving to address traumas and open new perspectives, thereby offering significant points of contact for psychoanalysis, particularly concerning the topic of violence. The exhibition focuses on underground and alternative comics, including autobiographical, journalistic, and fictional works presented as books, anthologies, magazines, or webcomics.

Visitors are advised not to visit if sensitive to explicit depictions of violence, as the content is not suitable for persons under 16. Tickets can be booked via the provided link.