Mira Mann, “The Red Shoes”, 2025, Photography, 10 × 12.6 cm, 40 × 51 cm (framed), 3 unique works + 1 Artist’s proof, 1.900 € / 4.900 € (series)
Mira Mann works across multimedia and performance to explore fictional spaces and narratives that shed light on social structures, collective memory, and emerging forms of storytelling. In this ten-part photographic series, Mann presents stills taken from the video documentation of a production by the theatre collective “The Red Shoes.” Their autofictional play “A Letter from Berlin,” performed in 2016 at the Arko Arts Theater in Daehangno, Seoul, draws on the lived realities and personal experiences of the South Korean nurses who perform in the work themselves. Beginning in the 1960s, these nurses were recruited to address the acute shortage of care workers in West Germany. Even before the official recruitment agreement, a group of South Korean nurses arrived in Neuendettelsau near Nuremberg as part of a “pilot project” initiated by the Diakonie. Through the motif of double costuming in their own work uniforms, “The Red Shoes” not only speaks to the experiences of migrant workers in Germany, but also reflects on the inherent performativity of care labor.
Mira Mann (*1993, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) has recently presented solo exhibitions and performances at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva; Klosterruine, Berlin; N/A, Seoul; DREI, Cologne; de Appel, Amsterdam; and the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf. Mann also took part in the 15th Gwangju Biennale. In 2026, Mann will present a performance in public space in Nuremberg as part of “Reveries,” organized by Kunstverein Nürnberg – Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft.