Loop City Screen x DOM: Katrin Bittl

“We must watch to our fill”

I always become wary when I hear a phrase with the word “must”. But it was exactly this phrase by Katrin Bittl that was like an electroshock for me, like an adrenaline injection. It made me wake up, open my eyes, and stop being afraid to watch.

I have met many artists. I have always been attracted to radical art forms, from bodily actionism to conceptual practice. But Katrin seems to be the bravest of them all. And it is not just about the artists. Her art is a cold shower. Her art is a wave of a nine-point storm. Her art is an exposure that one cannot fathom, and it is impossible to ignore.

And then the paradox appears: when you meet the artist, you are stunned. How can this petite, tender, and polite young woman have the power and the will of a titan?

Katrin was born in 1994 near Munich. From childhood, she has lived with spinal muscular atrophy. She began her studies as a social worker, but discarded them for the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. From 2017, she studied under Professor Hermann Pitz there. Her diploma work, “A Gaze at Water – Nude, in the Lift,” was awarded a prize by the Academic Society and became an important recognition of her artistic voice.

Her projects were shown at exhibitions in Germany and Europe. This Body is Mine (Munich, 2022), Debütantinnen 2023* (Halle 6, Munich), Politics of Being Heard (Berlin, 2025). She received grants and stipends, including HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin. And now, soon enough, DOM Art Residence will present the artists in Spain, within the framework of the City Screen Loop festival.

Katrin finds, researches, and makes visible the facts that for ages people with special needs were crossed out, eliminated from historical context. They were not in the official portraits, in museums, or in formal art history. And then she says, “So, I will place them there”.

And just this way, her series of repainting classical portraits of the 18th and 19th centuries appeared. She takes representative images of “perfect” bodies and adds to each and one of them a special trait: a wheelchair, a prosthetic limb, a cleft lip, or scoliosis. This gesture is both radical and surprisingly natural: as if history gets back what was stricken out. She literally inscribes otherness into the cultural canon.

When Katrin says that “normative people build an inclusive environment for normative people”, it sounds like a precise diagnosis. We are so diligently trying to demonstrate openness and loyalty, so loudly declare the fairness and equal rightsthat we ourselves start to believe in, our image of a progressive society. But in front of the fragile, sincere, and forthright Katrin, we find ourselves lost.

We are not prepared.

Her art proclaims loudly, sharply, and daringly: “I’m here!”—and she belongs.

Within the framework of the project I’m here, we show three works:

• The Pee Privilege, where the basic physiology becomes a political gesture.
• The Harvest (with participation Saioa Alvarez), where her body and the equipment become the image of dependence and liberation
• The Cranes (co-autor Saioa Alvarez), where the nakedness and industrial scenery collide in one frame.

Her work systematically attacks the rules of the game themselves. She does it with exquisite finesse, irony, and provocation, so that all one can do is meet her direct gaze. It’s impossible to look away. That’s why “We must watch to our fill” and stop being afraid to watch.

November 17
From 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM, visitors are invited to watch video performances by Katrin Bittl.

At 1:00 PM, the public talk with the director will take place.

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