The Winter Tour is the annual exhibition of the students of the Düsseldorf Art Academy at the end of each winter semester. As part of the traditional academy presentation, the graduates show their semester and final works.

We took a look around during the last winter tour from 16 to 20 February 2022 and discovered 8 female students whose work caught our eye directly, and invited them to take part in our "All-Female" group exhibition D.8IGHT.

Krystyna Fitz-Harris (*1992 Sanok, Poland) explores gender-specific and cross-gender themes in her work - we are showing some of her paintings - and questions influences such as upbringing and environment on a woman's desire and lust.

Sojeong Lee (*1993 in Cheong ju, South Korea) focuses on human beings in her paintings. Strongly influenced by manga culture, she depicts figures in a comic-abstract and humorous way, their moods emphasised by expressive colours.

Charlotte Maurer (*1995 in Baltimore, USA) shows works from her series "Intrusive Thoughts", which thematise and visualise these very thoughts. Made with embroidery on water-soluble cellulose fabric, the unspeakable is voiced, causes discomfort and loses its emotional power after some time.

Marie Miklus (*1997 in Berlin) is interested in the possibilities of gestural, abstract painting in her work, influenced by various techniques. These come together in a spontaneous, experimental way of working in such a way that shimmering colour spaces emerge, sometimes inhabited by mystical beings.

Nadja Lana's (*1992 in Wuppertal) large-format paintings - literally an orgy of motifs that at first glance seem disjointed (a frog, a vulva, a dolphin, a phallus and a horse's head) - provide an insight into a state of feeling between lust and fear that determines her painterly work and requires the viewer not only to see, but to watch.

Aduni Ogunsan (*1997 in Tönisvorst) focuses on very personal narratives in her painterly and sculptural works and thematises Afro-German identity in contemporary society. Postcolonial processes are worked through here and the life experiences of the Afro-diaspora within Germany are examined.

Alissa Ritter (*1995 in Duisburg) deals with moments of memory across all media. Painting, textiles and media installations are at the centre of her artistic practice. The works revolve around questions of biography, social origin and belonging.

Rosa Helene Weiland (*1996 in Düsseldorf) creates "haptic paintings" which, in the combination of paint and waxed leather yarn, turn fabrics of different weights and thicknesses into one. Weiland is attracted by the possibility of holding together different substrates with different expressions through a common rhythm.