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Madame Kio – The Illusion of the Sexes

15. April 2012 – 23. September 2012

On the occasion of her 70th birthday the Schwules Museum celebrates Madame Kio with a exhibition documenting the artist’s life.

Madame Kio was born Cornél Hédl in Hungary at the end of the 2nd World War and began training as a ballet dancer from the age of nine. From Debrecen, via Budapest, Leipzig and Düsseldorf he danced his way to West Berlin which in 1968 became his new home. Forced by an on-stage accident to change his disciplinary focus, Cornél began a second career as a transvestite artist, Madame Kio. Alongside solo appearances Kio ran several travesty theatres in succession with his life partner Hermann and founded Kio und die Crazy Boys, one of Berlin’s largest travesty troupes. All this activity makes Madame Kio representative of the heyday of the postwar transvestite scene in West Berlin in the 1970s.

Curator: Thomas Hüttmann