Anja Westerfrölke works as a textile and new media artist using drawings, objects and installation. She has developed an understanding of art as a collaborative and communicative event which she practices in her work and teaching.
Her interest focuses also on archive, cultural practices and common fields of artistic production and economic necessities. She has been exhibiting using space installation, performance, video, www, text and textile in public art institutions and site-specific situations.
Born in Germany, Anja Westerfrölke lives and work in Linz (Austria). She travels and develops her skills and practices in foreign working situations. Her work has been shown at home and abroad.
Commissioned by the Southern Alberta Art gallery, Lethbridge, Canada (1996 - 1999),
The over 140 stories found in the CD ROM 'Library' of READING ROOM are collected from European immigrants and their descendents to Western Canada at the turn of the century until now. They are, like most family stories, remembered and retold as acelebration of both the unusual and the ordinary.
A few of the stories situated anonymously among the rest, are invented.
The over 140 stories found in the CD ROM 'Library' of
READING ROOM
are collected from European immigrants and their descendents to
Western Canada at the turn of the century until now. They are, like most
family stories, remembered and retold as a celebration of both the
unusual and the ordinary.
A few of the stories situated anonymously among the rest, are invented.
These are reminders of the inaccuracy and subjectivity of memory and
of history and of the curious relation between 'fact' and 'fiction'.
On site in Vilnius, Lithuania, I came across the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. During the Soviet occupation the Sisters of the Visitandines left the convent and the state authorities opened a prison in the buildings. On the inside the church itself was no longer visible after the prison had left in 2007.
During 2008 – 2010 I developed this site-specific Art Installation as well as exhibitions and performances for Vilnius as the European Capital of Culture of 2009. This project was carried out in collaboration with Marie-Françoise Stewart-Ebel, Brussels, while we investigated the relationship between art and culture.
A growing number of these cards, 21 x 10,5 cm each, belong to a long term archive called p_p (personal practice). I cut out images from printed flyers in my postal mail, which are sent to me by international aid organisations to inform me about the need to donate money.
Mounted on cards these clippings undergo a long process of dyeing, pressing and preserving. Cards turn out with fragments or even empty, others show the mould of a credit card. As a teenager I often asked my parents who had experienced the Nazi regime in Germany: ‘What did you know then?’ I intend to document what I have known (and not known) in my lifetime.
Projects, practices and process structure the interest in the body of work i have produced.
Projects address work over a longer period of time, the involvement of other people as well.
Practises involve different ways and strategies i function as an artist.
Process emphasizes artistic work.
projects:
school-memory
digging in Eferding
onsite in Vilnius
a plumb job for Newborough
Archive of Digitales
reading room
practise:
in the Studio
on site (in Vilnius, a room)
collaboration
exhibition
online
process:
installation
serie
textile
video
archiv
art book
////////////////////////////////
project: troyes /on site in Vilnius/ digA/ readingroom/ etc
