Filipka Rutkowska: The Iron Lipstick

Pickle Bar, Stephanstraße 11, 10559, Berlin

September 11, 2026 – September 11, 2026

As part of the Wing-Wing programme, Filipka Rutkowska’s The Iron Lipstick combines spoken word and choreography to embody and reimagine Margaret Thatcher as a queer spirit – in contrast to her political legacy of queer hostility. Inspired by Damian Barr's memoir Maggie and Me, a queer coming-of-age story in 1980s Scotland, Thatcher's work resurrects iconic speeches and develops a political fiction that calls for the abolition of gender to envision a genderless society. By queering a figure associated with oppression, the performance stages a paradoxical closeness to the demons of history, reveals how they reappear today, and at the same time opens up the possibility of taming and transforming them. The performance includes a replica of Thatcher's costume, which was recently shown at an auction by Christie's. Curated by Michał Grzegorzek and Anastasia Marukhina, the Wing-Wing program examines politics as a contemporary mythology in which narratives of power and identity are listed, exaggerated and reimagined. Through the language of drag, persona and monstrous embodiment, the program shows how social and political realities are simultaneously made visible and transformed by acts of performance and metamorphosis.