Wohl oder Übel The woman who makes female art more visible

If you talked to neighbourhood activist and passionate collectivist Ana Amil about the various projects she has initiated and is involved in, you will always hear the sentence: "All these projects could only be realised with the help of other people". Ana Amil is a mission-conscious woman. Her message, which she also lives by herself, is in short: Let us create places and things together, meet as equals and respect each other as what we want to be.

And so she is, among other things, co-operator of the women's collective micromall on St. Pauli, singer of the band DEVA and, together with Niels Boeing and Dorothee Wolter, co-founder and curator of the Wohl-oder-Übel-Salon at the Wohl oder Übel district living room on St.Pauli.

As if that were not enough, she has been chairwoman of the art and culture association Kabinett der schönen Künste e.V. since 2019. An association of socially, culturally and politically active people who are particularly interested in Hamburg's St. Pauli district. She also co-founded the Feminité Museum in Hamburg's Gängeviertel.

Here, stories of female-reading people living and working in St. Pauli are collected, archived, exhibited and told. In the long term, this place will also function as an archive where anyone interested can research the stories of artists and extraordinary women in St. Pauli.

Among others, the story of one of the most important German artists of the 20th century: Elfriede Lohse-Wächtler. She was born in Dresden, attended the School of Arts and Crafts there and cultivated contacts with the Dresden Secession Group 1919 around Otto Dix, Conrad Felixmüller, Otto Griebel and Oskar Kokoschka. She lived, painted and drew in St. Pauli and was murdered by the Nazis in Pirna (Saxony) on 31 July 1940.

In order to bring contemporary female art more into the public eye, Ana Amil founded the online platform Golden Age Art together with Clifford Smith. The insight for the necessity of such a platform grew during the time she curated exhibitions, became increasingly involved with art and realised that women were underrepresented in the collecting practices of statehouses.

For example, at Neue Nationalgalerie, 14% of the works on display are by women artists, although more than 60% of the art students are women or read themselves as women. Changing this is one of the declared aims of the work of Ana Amil and her fellow campaigners.

If you want to meet Ana Amil in person and engage in a conversation about female art, neighbourhood activism, fashion, music or simply life in general, you can meet her at the Feminté Museum in Caffamacherreihe, the micromall in Rendsburger Strasse or the Wohl oder Übel Salon in Wohlwillstrasse. Once there, just look out for the woman with the red hair and the unmistakable voice.