40th Anniversary of death on August 6, 2023
The installation "me absolvo", designed by the Swiss artist and AIDS activist Michèle Meyer, is a donation of the German Aids Aid to the Schwules Museum Berlin from the year 2017
On the occasion of the upcoming 40th anniversary of Nomi's death, Nomi expert Monika Hempel approached the Schwules Museum Berlin with the idea of an exhibition or at least a memorial event. There, however, they reacted with restraint. This is unfortunate not only because a work of art is stored in the house's depot, which illustrates more than any other the importance of Nomi in connection with HIV and AIDS. The installation "me absolvo", designed by the Swiss artist and AIDS activist Michèle Meyer, is a confessional that she has converted into an altar - provided with a glory hole, various devotional objects and iconic images from Albrecht Dürer to Rock Hudson to Klaus Nomi, whose face stands out above all others. The artwork is a donation of the German Aids Foundation to the Schwules Museum from the year 2017. In the meantime, it has been voted one of the hundred audience favorites – not least because it touches on topics such as desire, illness and shame.
With Klaus Nomi, the Schwules Museum would also have the opportunity to explore the relationship between identity and body from the specific Nomi perspective. Nomi is still admired today as a style icon, but he never corresponded to a gay ideal of beauty. Especially not in the 1970s and 1980s, when moustaches, muscles and other attributes of robust masculinity were favored in the scene. According to a text from the New York Times, Nomi spent a lot of time in the darkrooms of legendary clubs such as "Mineshaft" or "Anvil": places where, according to legend, the individual rose during sex in the collective of sweating hordes of men. However, Man Parrish, a friend and performer from Nomi's stage troupe, hints that Nomi longed for a deeper connection and was unhappy that he did not find a partner. The fact that this did not succeed may be partly due to Nomi's internalized expectation of being different from everyone else. When gay contemporaries such as Parrish or Kenny Scharf comment on Nomi's sexuality in the documentary "The Nomi Song", however, there is always a hint of masculinist contempt for Nomi's ambivalent sexuality.