Frances Scholz: The Upson Girls

The Mönchehaus Museum Goslar presents The Upson Girls, the first institutional solo exhibition of Frances Scholz (*1962 in Washington, D.C., lives in Cologne) in Lower Saxony, Germany. This comprehensive exhibition features works from the past five years as well as new productions created specifically for the show. 

At its core are interrelated series of works that unfold throughout the entire building, complemented by a video compilation spanning thirty years of artistic practice, alongside new series across painting, sculpture, photography, and video.

At the same time, the exhibition marks the launch of the museum’s new visual identity (Studio Thomas Spallek, Porto) as well as its newly redesigned exhibition spaces (in cooperation with studio lennart wolff / wolff:architekten BDA, Berlin), conceived as an ongoing transformation bridging past and present.

Frances Scholz’ cross-media practice—in collaboration with nature and landscape— ranges from post-abstract painting to film and photography, as well as glass sculptures and video installations generated through deep learning AI using Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs). These works enter into dialogue with the newly exposed historic timber-frame architecture of the building, its visitors, and the surrounding forest.

The exhibition draws on Karen Barad’s (*1956) concept of intra-action. Barad, a scholar of feminist studies, philosophy, and intellectual history, understands life as a network: humans, other living beings, and things do not exist independently, but as entangled relations.

The exhibition title is taken from the series The Upson Girls (2026), consisting of stills from a video filmed in a forested area in Ireland. The characters Amy, Ella, and Eva appear as projections oscillating between presence and absence in the sense of Jacques Lacan, and remain deliberately indeterminate: as images organized around a structural lack, generating meaning precisely through what is not shown. As in other works by Scholz (AMBOY, 2015), the new series engages with the mediated representation of women’s deaths (also in Scripted Lifes, 2026), linking these to historical image traditions—from witch persecutions to contemporary forms of gender-based violence—as well as to practices of remembrance, collective memory, and the politics of visibility.

The Mönchehaus Museum itself becomes part of the narrative: from the Däle (entrance hall) through the ground floor to the upper levels, a precise spatial choreography unfolds, interweaving motifs from science fiction, mythology, geology, memory, and landscape. A central work of the exhibition is the site-specific three-channel video installation from the Earth Wall series (2024/2025). The footage shows uprooted trees in a former quarry area in Connecticut (New England), expanded and altered using Neural Radiance Fields. The vertical tree bodies—between organic substance and digital construction—become protagonists in a state between life and death. The glass sculpture The Traveler (2021) functions as a portal and connective element between the spaces, guiding visitors to the Docking Station (2021) beneath the roof. This creates an almost archaeological structure in which The Upson Girls can be situated—while simultaneously remaining elusive at all times.
 
The exhibition is curated by Miriam Bettin.

Graphic and spatial redesign
The exhibition is accompanied by extensive graphic and architectural interventions. The visual identity of the Mönchehaus Museum Goslar is further developed in collaboration with Studio Thomas Spallek (Porto), with a focus on the fusion of historical substance and contemporary clarity. The custom typeface Mönchehaus and the new logo draw inspiration from the historic mural at the museum’s entrance and were developed in collaboration with the type design agency ABC Dinamo (Berlin).

The redesign of the exhibition spaces in the 17th-century timber-framed building is realized in cooperation with Lennart Wolff and Nwakuso Edozien from the Berlin-based studio lennart wolff / wolff:architekten BDA. It reveals the historic timber-framed architecture anew, connecting interior and exterior. It creates spaces for exchange, research, and an archive, while bridging past and present.

Public program Walpurgis
As part of the exhibition, a thematic Walpurgis program will take place on April 30, 2026, from 4pm to midnight at the Mönchehaus Museum Goslar, featuring lectures, readings, performances, concerts, and film screenings by Ilka Becker, Paula Erstmann, Nora Hansen, Bubu Ogisi, Mark von Schlegell, and Frances Scholz. The program connects historical themes of the Harz region—mythological narratives, magic, traditional customs, and the violent history of witch trials—with critical, queer-feminist perspectives.

A T-shirt edition and a poster edition by Frances Scholz will be released alongside the exhibition. 

Frances Scholz (*1962 in Washington, D.C., USA) lives and works in Cologne. Since 2001, she has been Professor of Painting at the Braunschweig University of Art. Her work has been shown in numerous institutional solo and group exhibitions, including at Skulpturenpark Köln, Braunsfelder in Cologne, The Kitchen in New York, Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco, Kölnischer Kunstverein in Cologne, ICA London, Bundeskunsthalle, and Kunstmuseum Bonn. Since 2017, she has been represented by Clages, Cologne.