Anna Slobodnik, Visual Arts, 2018

*1990 in Moscow, lives in Berlin

Anna Slobodnik was a Masters’ student of Prof. Mark Lammert, UdK Berlin (2016). She has won Schulz Stübner Foundation Prize (2016) and received a scholarship Prize for Young Art, Kunstverein Centre Bagatelle (2018). Exhibitions include: Painting Painting Painting, Raum Vollreinigung, Berlin (2019), Galerie Didier Devillez (2018), Brussels, Druck_Sache, Kommunale Galerie Pankow, Berlin (2018), Schulz Stübner Foundation Prize Exhibition, Grevenbroich (solo, 2017).

Villa Serpentara Fellowship

What Matters

Work Presentation 2022

“What Matters” was the question andtatement of 2022 presentation of works by the JUNGE AKADEMIE, the interdisciplinary and international artist-in-residence programme of the Akademie der Künste. In an exhibition and a multifaceted programme including screenings, concerts and readings, 29 fellows from all of the Akademie’s art sections presented sound and video installations, photographs, sculptures, paintings and performances they developed during their studio residencies in the Hansaviertel in Berlin and at Villa Serpentara in Olevano, Italy.

“What Matters” is not to be understood as the title of a thematic exhibition but rather indicates the diversity of questions, perspectives and realities that are interlaced in an artist residency, while emphasising their urgency. The exhibition focused on the artists’ individual approaches that encompass a broad spectrum of themes: from questions about the transformation of societies and their expression in relation to the urban space and landscape, to interrelations between the individual and social systems such as state, religion and the economy, to reflections on body images and conceptions of history, personal archives and the intertwining of nature, technology and culture.

What matters is artistic testimony, poetic resistance and the imagining of sustainable futures in the face of global tipping points – whether climatic or political in nature. Two years into the pandemic and the associated restrictions, “What Matters” was the most comprehensive presentation of works to date by the JUNGE AKADEMIE.

To quote one of the fellows: “What matters? Make them see…”

Untitled, Cycle Papers

Oil and pencil on paper

Anna Slobodnik examines ornamented and patterned interior objects in her paintings. Spatial and cultural references play an important role in this. Anna Slobodnik takes a procedural approach to her work and, guided by the search for form and colour, puts thin layers of paint on top of each other; in the process, she examines the conventions of perception of carpets, wallpaper and tiles in order to juxtapose these against the modes of perception and spatial realities of the visual arts. She shows a triptych of three large formats comprising long strips of paper in graphite and oil in the exhibition. While one of the works examines carpets more closely as a motif, the other two borrow from wallpaper, tiles and mosaics.