A NIGHT AT SCHLACHTER 151

Berlin Art Week is never short of openings. But this one felt particularly close to home – quite literally.

At Schlachter 151, the home of Fräulein, we opened RAW, the solo exhibition by Ukrainian artist Julia Beliaeva, and invited friends, artists and collaborators to spend the evening with us.

Glasses were filled with Stranger Wine and the alcohol-free wines of Kolonne Null, people moved between Julia’s works, old friends found each other and new conversations began.

It was a night about art and womanhood, but also about the beginning of something we have been quietly working on for some time. Because that evening, surrounded by Julia’s work, we unveiled for the very first time the statue she created exclusively for the Fräulein Award. And suddenly, an idea became real.

RAW: A MIRROR TO THE WORLD ON FIRE

In RAW, Julia Beliaeva looks at what it means to have a female body in a world in which violence is not always exceptional or spectacular, but often woven into everyday life.

Her work moves between anger and desire, strength and vulnerability, agency and sacrifice. Julia questions why qualities such as anger, aggression and sexual desire have historically been accepted as natural expressions of masculinity, while the same forces in women have so often been interpreted as excess or failure.

Her women refuse these simple categories. They can be angry and tender, frightened and powerful, beautiful and wounded. They do not have to choose.

As a Ukrainian artist, Julia also brings the realities of Russia’s war against Ukraine into the most intimate spaces. In The Vivid Dream in the Dark, the seemingly peaceful image of a reclining woman is disrupted by the fear of being killed in her sleep. Elsewhere, she addresses the ways women change their clothing, bodies and behaviour in order to protect themselves.

War is no longer abstract. It enters the bedroom, the body and a woman’s understanding of herself.

Perhaps this is why Julia’s work feels so close to something Fräulein has always believed: there is no single definition of what a woman is allowed to be.

And perhaps it is also why she felt like exactly the right artist to give a physical form to what comes next.

AND THE FRÄULEIN AWARD GOES TO…

Halfway through the evening, with Volée Aperitivo in glasses and the room now properly full, we asked everyone to gather for a small reveal.

For more than a decade, Fräulein has been telling stories about women who create, question, challenge and redefine the worlds around them.

Now we want to take that idea beyond the pages of the magazine.

In 2027, during Gallery Weekend Berlin, we will launch the first Fräulein Award: celebrating women who are shaping the future, creating change and making the world a more open, equal and generous place for women and men alike.

And the timing does not feel accidental.

At a moment when hard-won women’s rights and freedoms are being questioned again, we believe female solidarity cannot simply be something we talk about.

It has to become something we practise.

Because success creates visibility. Visibility creates influence. And when women use that influence not only for themselves but to lift others with them, individual success becomes collective power.

That is the idea at the heart of the Fräulein Award.

MORE THAN ONE NIGHT

The award will not begin and end with a ceremony.

Over the coming months, it will unfold through dinners, encounters, nominations, conversations and editorial stories, bringing together women from different generations, disciplines and cities.

At its centre will be a founding committee of women from culture, art, fashion, film, music, literature, business, activism and beyond.

Their task is deliberately simple: to look around and recognise another woman.

Who should we know?
Whose work deserves to be seen?
Who is changing something?
Who would you like to see succeed?

Each committee member will nominate other women, creating a chain of recognition that we hope will continue far beyond the award itself.

The circle will grow year by year. And with it, a Fräulein community of women who exchange ideas, make introductions, create opportunities and open doors for those coming next.

Because ultimately, the most interesting thing about an award is not only who receives it. It is what happens when one person decides that somebody else deserves to be seen.

THE AWARD STATUE CREATED BY JULIA BELIAEVA

And then it was finally time to meet her.

After a sound performance by Konstantin Schimanovski brought everyone together in the gallery’s first room, the atmosphere shifted. His performance set a ceremonial, unexpectedly moving tone – and for a moment, the noise of the opening gave way to a shared sense of attention.

It felt like the right moment to reveal what had been waiting at the heart of the exhibition all evening: the statue Julia Beliaeva created for the Fräulein Award.

We knew from the beginning that we did not want a conventional trophy. We wanted the Fräulein Award itself to be an artwork – an object with character, contradictions and a life of its own.

So we asked Julia to create it.

During the opening of RAW, we unveiled her Fräulein Award statue publicly for the first time.

There was something beautifully fitting about seeing the statue there, surrounded by Julia’s other women, inside Schlachter 151.

For now, she is an artwork. Next year, she will pass from the hands of one woman into those of another as a gesture that says:

I see you. What you are doing matters. And I want others to see it, too.

And then we did what one should probably do after introducing a new Fräulein to the world: we raised a glass.

Some with Kolonne Null, some with Stranger Wine, some with a Volée Aperitivo.

And then the evening continued.

WHEN AN OPENING STOPS BEING AN OPENING

At some point, people stopped looking at their watches.

Conversations became longer, the music became louder, and Lemon Sour arrived at exactly the right moment: when an exhibition opening slowly stops behaving like an exhibition opening and turns into a party.

People stayed. They talked. They drank. And they danced to the sounds of DJ duo Maria Magdalena, who carried the evening from exhibition opening into a proper Berlin Art Week night.

And Schlachter 151 once again became exactly what we hoped it could be: a home for Fräulein beyond the pages of the magazine. A place for art, conversation, community, new ideas and, occasionally, a very good party.

By the end of the night, RAW was officially open. Julia’s work had given us plenty to think and talk about. And the first Fräulein had made her public debut.

For the Fräulein Award, this was the first small moment in what we hope will become something much bigger.

The Fräulein Award is coming in 2027.

And this was only the beginning.