ENCORE Soul Stake Degenerate Art Show

Philadelphia, PA — Soul Stake: Degenerate Art Show is a reappropriation and confrontation of the 1937 Nazi propaganda exhibition Entartete Kunst that transforms a history of censorship into a catalyst for resistance and collective healing. Through immersive installation, performance, and a wearable sculpture runway, Soul Stake confronts generational trauma, authoritarian resurgence, and the cyclical nature of cultural repression while galvanizing Philadelphia’s artistic community to remember, resist, and reimagine the future.

 Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) sought to mock and condemn modernist, expressionist, and nonconformist artists by making an example of their work. The Third Reich seized more than 5,000 artworks from public and private collections and displayed 650 of them as examples of decadence, weakness, mental illness, and racial impurity. These works were positioned in direct opposition to those deemed adequately German in their clarity and purity, and the exhibition was held concurrently with in the Great German Art Exhibition. Some artist…