Talk, Reading, Solo Photography Exhibition: Immaterial Indignities: Desire, a Catalyst – Mary Katharine Tramontana

Her poems possess the same erotic solipsism as Annie Ernaux’s Simple Passion 

—DAZED

Her poetics of submission give the reader the option of subjecthood in either position 

—Toni Hildebrandt, co-editor of PPPP: Pier Paolo Pasolini Philosopher

On the back of her much buzzed-about first solo show in Berlin (including a viral Dazed profile), artist, poet, and writer (NYT, Esquire) Mary Katharine Tramontana will debut work from her new series Immaterial Indignities – a collection of self-portraits, poems, and letters she sent to ambivalent lovers, an art book publisher and fashion PR, at F-Festival (F for Fuck the Patriarchy).

In the obsessive energy of Kris Kraus’ I Love Dick (1997), she'll read published and private works from this epistolary and visual archive of unsynchronized desire, and give a talk on 5 March at 7PM, “Immaterial Indignities: Desire, a Catalyst,” about making art from romantic abjection and its liberatory potential.

Please join us for a small reception directly following the talk in the bar.

While men’s writing and art about their lives is often canonised as revealing universally relatable truths, women’s autobiographical work on lust has been historically dismissed as trivial and narcissistic until recently. Immaterial Indignities is a catalog of contemplation on sexual longing, appetite, and agency in a world that vehemently denies female desire and intellect as coexisting. Signed copies of Tramontana's hand-sewn limited edition artbook Serious Pleasures: Poems of Lust and Longing (2024) will be available. More on Instagram and X. 

The exhibition will be on view from March 3–9. 

Mary Katharine Tramontana (b. 1982) has exhibited photography internationally in solo shows and group shows in Berlin, Miami, and Savannah. She's given several talks on culture and gender, and has collaborated with institutions like Reina Sofía, the Spanish Film Archive, WILZIG Museum, Arsenal Institute, Academy of Arts Berlin, and silent green. Her work on sexual politics and art is published in the NYT, Esquire, Playboy, the Guardian, the Atlantic, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. The recipient of a Frieze arts writing bursary, she’s also worked as a sex research assistant at Kinsey Institute. Her first book, Serious Pleasures: Poems of Lust and Longing (2024) was released during her first solo show in Berlin last winter. This spring she'll be in residence at Villa Lena to write LUST: Porn, Pleasure, Power co-written with Erika Lust (2026). She lives in Berlin.