Artists / Isabell Spengler
Isabell Spengler
OVERSTAY – The Story of Lopa Grine (part 1, Durations are Free + 2)
Two-part video installation · Film projection (18 min.) · Video loop (7 min.) · 2025–2026
Isabell Spengler, OVERSTAY – The Story of Lopa Grine (part 1, Durations are Free + 2), 2025–2026 (work in progress). Two-part video installation with film projection (18 min.) and video loop (7 min.). Courtesy of the artist.
About the Work
The two-part video installation “OVERSTAY – The Story of Lopa Grine” tells the story of a star's downfall in the 1930s and draws parallels to current political developments. The fictional character Lopa Grine, whom I portray, is inspired by Valeska Gert, Josephine Baker, and the Polish silent film star Pola Negri. Negri's career in Hollywood (1923–32) and Berlin (1934–39) ended due to her foreign accent in early English-language sound films and her involvement in Nazi cultural policy, specifically her excessively long film work at UFA during the Nazi era.
In slowed-down, surreal video images and reenactments of Negri's memoirs and press photos, the fictional character Lopa Grine, accompanied by a cheetah, appears as a ghost in the present day at locations in Bad Ems – Germany and Hollywood – USA, filmed in 2017/2025. In light of the current rise of the New Right, questions of artistic freedom, resistance, emigration or the underground – then and now – are examined.
Isabell Spengler in her studio in Berlin, wearing a homemade unicorn mask, 2023. Photo: © Anja Weber
About the artist
Isabell Spengler
lives and works in Berlin
Isabell Spengler is a film and video artist from Berlin. In collaborations with artists from dance, performance, and music, she develops new forms of expanded cinema to depict imaginary worlds. She is a member of the feminist collective MATERNAL FANTASIES.
Exhibitions & screenings worldwide since 1998: including Berlinale (2007, 2009, 2010 and 2012), Bremen Video Art Prize 2019, MOCA Los Angeles 2020, Videonale.19 in Bonn 2023, KUMU Art Museum in Tallinn 2026.
