An international coterie of contemporary female artists give form to the political and aesthetic facets of our interior lives.

The artists featured in this book proffer a radical and innovative formal language that positions interiority as both political and aesthetic. The work of Njideka Akunyili Crosby comprises vibrantly patterned paintings on paper that negotiate the complex cultural terrain of a life formed between two worlds: her adopted home in America and her native Nigeria. Inspired by photography, fashion, architecture, and design, as well as her own family history, Akunyili Crosby's works often feature domestic spaces that function as physical, conceptual, and emotional points of arrival and departure. Conversely, the Portuguese sculptor Leonor Antunes focuses on migration and the transformation of form and ideas beyond temporal and geographical spaces. The starting point for her elegant site-specific sculptures is the exploration of art, design, and architectural history. Adriana Varejão addresses the colonial history of Brazil in her visceral sculptures and paintings. She often deploys the motif of the wall, the boundary between inside and outside, in her work. The omnipresence of the past also colors the work of trained stage designer Henrike Naumann, whose immersive installations engage with the history of East-West German relations, as well as contemporary instances of right-wing ideology. Naumann explores the mechanisms of radicalization and explores how they manifest themselves in space.

ANNA SCHNEIDER is Curator at Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany.