Anna Ehrenstein (b, 1993) in Germany to Albanian parents. Anna Ehrenstein works in transdisciplinary artistic practice with a focus on research and mediation. While her mother came on a working visa, her father left on rejected asylum and after a transeuropean odissey started anew in Tirana. This biographical peculiarity sparked her interest in the necropolitics of migration. Raised between Germany and Albania reflections on diaspora-related visual and material culture, the social life of things and networked images form main foci of her work. She studied photography and media arts at the University of Applied Arts in Dortmund, DE and the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, DE.
Additionally she frequented curatorial classes in Valetta, ML and Lagos, NG and see’s her work as an art educator as part of her artistic and activist practice. She works with a variety of groups together on collaborative artistic projects, e.g. amongst others for the 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, within District Berlin as part of the intersectional, feminist collective N*A*I*L*S or for the Critical Academy in Dublin. She exhibited internationally amongst others at the Lothringer Halle13 Munich DE, the Shang 8 Gallery Beijing CH, the R’encontres d’Arles FR, Pablo’s Birthday New York US, Museum Centquatre Paris FR, Bazament Art Space Tirana AL, Fotomuseum Winterthur CHF or the Museum of Visual Arts in Leipzig DE.
Gallery
Statement
Anna Ehrenstein uses lens based media, installation, social performative moments, sculpture, print or writing to reflect the intersections and divergences of so-called ‘high’ and ‘low cultures’ and their socio-economic and political constitutions. Her practice is focused on transdisciplinary production with an emphasis on research based work and educational as well as curational methodologies . What concerns her most are visualizations of contemporary issues, to which a broad audience can relate. In radicalising and exaggerating different aesthetics, while taking inspiration from the death of mass media she is showing contrasting angles in a current process of reflection. Many of her works are interested in speculative human and non human entanglements and the affects of late capitalism, digitization and intersectional systemic structures behind media and hyperobjects.