Unzucht

In their solo exhibition Unzucht - Kiss the Devil’s Arse, Itchi Fleischer weaves a dense web of art-historical references drawing heavily on Christian iconography, only to immediately challenge it, turn it on its head and confront visitors with the structures of patriarchal power, fear and desire that underpin the institution of the Church and have for centuries enabled the oppression, exclusion and demonization of women and queer people.
Drawing on the biblical depiction of the Last Judgement in the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus, as the Good Shepherd, divides his flock into sheep and goats, Fleischer reimagines this subject in drag in the oil painting The Parable of the Blessed and Cursed (2026). Taking on several roles at once, Fleischer poses as the goat, the witch and Jesus unified in one persona, thereby immediately abolishing all ecclesiastical hierarchies.
The binary opposition between the good, innocent sheep and the evil, satanic goat divides the exhibition into thematically structured spaces. Here, Fleischer references medieval English doom paintings, depictions of the sacrificial lamb ‘Agnus Dei’, and associations between the satanic goat and witch hunts and sodomy. In this multi-layered examination of Christian history—which is always also a visual history—Fleischer repeatedly highlights how the structures of the Church function as reproducers of patriarchal power, whilst simultaneously posing a question: Are we praying at the altar or are we being sacrificed, condemned in accordance with Christian traditions, shaped by exclusion rather than compassion?

Curated by Johanna Engemann