November 2006: Visiting Köln - The Eighth Square: Gender, Life and Desire in Art Since 1960

When a pawn in a chess match reaches the eighth square on the far side of the board, the player can swap him for a piece of his or her choice. So the pawn—a lowly foot soldier—can transform into a queen, a powerless figure into the epitome of power, a man into a woman.

Entitled The Eighth Square: Gender, Life and Desire in Art Since 1960, and on view at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the exhibition of over 250 works by more than 80 artists presents an overview of how art has examined almost every form of sexual desire outside of the heterosexual mainstream: transexuality, homosexuality and intersexuality, transgender, drag and cross dressing.
The show, with a strong emphasis on photographs, is spread out over several levels of the museum and is divided into thematic sections such as Machismo, Transsexuality and Intersexuality, Masquerade and Friendships, Outsiders, Discrimination and AIDS.