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In Conversation: Barbara Diener and Dr Sabine Kriebel, History of Art, UCC

In Conversation: Barbara Diener and Dr Sabine Kriebel, History of Art, UCC

September 24 - September 24, 2026
1-2pm
Cork Public Museum

Join the in-depth discussion between artist Barbara Diener and Dr Sabine Kriebel, Senior Lecturer in History of Art at UCC, in Cork Public Museum on Thursday 24 September from 1-2pm. This talk is part of Barbara’s solo exhibition The Rocket’s Red Glare, which is on view in The Lord Mayor’s Pavilion from 27 August through 3 October. With a shared interest in their respective German heritage and a love of photography, photomontage, and archives, Barbara and Sabine will reflect on the exhibition and discuss key ideas around legacy, authoritarianism and memory. Furthermore, they will look at the ways in which Barbara’s practice intervenes in a repressed past to highlight the unspoken and construct new narratives.

All welcome and no booking required

The Rocket’s Red Glare uses the life of instrumental German rocket scientist, Wernher von Braun, to explore the selective way history is told. This series challenges the often dual retelling of significant 20th century events, starting in Nazi-era Germany and culminating in the moon landing. Barbara’s interest in interpreting this chain of events comes from her own reckoning with history and her complicated German heritage surrounding World War II. For this exhibition Barbara has woven her family’s story into the project by reprinting photographs her grandfather took in 1941/42 while serving in the German Army.

About Sabine Kriebel

Dr Sabine Kriebel is a Senior Lecturer in History of Art at University College Cork. Her research focuses on the interpenetrations of art, materiality and politics, investigating the ways in which artists mobilize the qualities of specific media–photography, photomontage, collage, drawing, sculptural objects, painting, and the human body–to stage interventions and encourage cognitive shifts in the socio-political sphere. The dialogue between object and beholder is of particular interest, as is the specific historical matrix that gives rise to an aesthetic retort.

About Barbara Diener

Born in 1982 in Germany, Barbara Diener is a lens-based artist living and working in Cork City, Ireland. She earned a BFA in Photography from California College of the Arts and an MFA from Columbia College Chicago. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in private and institutional collections. Diener has completed artist residencies, including the Sample-Studios Spike Island Residency in 2025, and received multiple grants supporting her practice. Her monographs Phantom Power (2018) and The Rocket’s Red Glare (2023) were published by Daylight Books and Fw: Books respectively. In 2025, she received an Arts Council Visual Arts Bursary Award.





Join the in-depth discussion between artist Barbara Diener and Dr Sabine Kriebel, Senior Lecturer in History of Art at UCC, in Cork Public Museum on Thursday 24 September from 1-2pm. This talk is part of Barbara’s solo exhibition The Rocket’s Red Glare, which is on view in The Lord Mayor’s Pavilion from 27 August through 3 October. With a shared interest in their respective German heritage and a love of photography, photomontage, and archives, Barbara and Sabine will reflect on the exhibition and discuss key ideas around legacy, authoritarianism and memory. Furthermore, they will look at the ways in which Barbara’s practice intervenes in a repressed past to highlight the unspoken and construct new narratives.

All welcome and no booking required

The Rocket’s Red Glare uses the life of instrumental German rocket scientist, Wernher von Braun, to explore the selective way history is told. This series challenges the often dual retelling of significant 20th century events, starting in Nazi-era Germany and culminating in the moon landing. Barbara’s interest in interpreting this chain of events comes from her own reckoning with history and her complicated German heritage surrounding World War II. For this exhibition Barbara has woven her family’s story into the project by reprinting photographs her grandfather took in 1941/42 while serving in the German Army.

About Sabine Kriebel

Dr Sabine Kriebel is a Senior Lecturer in History of Art at University College Cork. Her research focuses on the interpenetrations of art, materiality and politics, investigating the ways in which artists mobilize the qualities of specific media–photography, photomontage, collage, drawing, sculptural objects, painting, and the human body–to stage interventions and encourage cognitive shifts in the socio-political sphere. The dialogue between object and beholder is of particular interest, as is the specific historical matrix that gives rise to an aesthetic retort.

About Barbara Diener

Born in 1982 in Germany, Barbara Diener is a lens-based artist living and working in Cork City, Ireland. She earned a BFA in Photography from California College of the Arts and an MFA from Columbia College Chicago. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in private and institutional collections. Diener has completed artist residencies, including the Sample-Studios Spike Island Residency in 2025, and received multiple grants supporting her practice. Her monographs Phantom Power (2018) and The Rocket’s Red Glare (2023) were published by Daylight Books and Fw: Books respectively. In 2025, she received an Arts Council Visual Arts Bursary Award.