Make Your Own Life examined the mythic proportions and art historical significance of the alternative scene based in Cologne in the late 80s and early 90s. Long an important city for art and commerce in Germany, during these years Cologne fostered a group of artists that bucked the establishment to raise important questions of artistic identity and institutional critique. For artists like Martin Kippenberger, Jutta Koether, Albert Oehlen, and Cosima von Bonin, art became a place to carve out their own terms of participation within the social, political, and economic constraints of the art world, where they could make their own lives the basis of their work, as Kippenberger extolled. This exhibition assembled the work of these figures alongside their American counterparts who exhibited in Cologne with them — Mike Kelley, Andrea Fraser, Christopher Williams, among them. The art on view encapsulated a critical, independent ethos and encompassed a wide range of stylistic and conceptual bents through an array of media from painting to rock music. Today these artists have become the not-so-distant forebears for a current generation forging creative personae that continue to break away from art world expectations and set new standards. This ongoing trend was represented through the work of Lucy McKenzie, Bernadette Corporation, Reena Spaulings, and others who attained critical success while retaining their countercultural stances.