Ana Strika. DIE VORSTELLUNG

Ana Strika is the ZF Art Foundation’s 43^rd artist-in-residence. As part of her 2024 scholarship she has created the site-specific installation entitled DIE VORSTELLUNG [THE PRESENTATION] at the Zeppelin Museum Friedrichshafen.

Ana Strika describes her working method as a procedural search through form, and her creative output as a form-finding process per se. Her installations emerge in resonance with the space, time and occasion and are sustained by the trove of everyday materials she collects and sorts: cardboard boxes, pieces of paper, parcel string, branches, scraps of wood, and plaster. She employs a modular principle to assign these elements, creating constellations in which objects come together in new levels of meaning. The forms created are open to different interpretations and, along with the diversity of materials, toy with the viewer’s memory and associations in ways continually renewed. ‘Each installation is an experimental arrangement and an experiment,’ says the artist.

Impressions, interactions within the new environment, but also chance encounters determine the artist’s process-orientated work. For the current installation DIE VORSTELLUNG, Strika created a space within a space. At the centre of the dark exhibition space, elements and objects from her collection of items are concentrated in miniature format on an amorphous platform at table height, not unlike a stage. Bundled rays of light showcase individual objects, casting harsh shadows.

Each step offers a change of perspective, opening up new spaces en miniature within the room. Openings become visible, affording unexpected insights, dividing up the spaces, overlapping one another. Indeed, spaces and shapes emerge in ever-new ways, surprisingly familiar yet disconcerting in this continual kaleidoscopic metamorphosis. A constantly evolving spatial collage takes shape, propelled by the movement of the visitors as they walk around the installation, exploring it. Time and again, Die Vorstellung opens up new spaces, for exploration and reflection, in a constant state of flux. Ana Strika allows her visitors to experience a world of shapes and imagination, multi-layered, mysterious and filled with poetry.

Ana Strika was born in Zurich in 1981, where she also lives and works. She studied fine arts at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdk). Besides numerous awards, she obtained a sabbatical (Werkjahr) from the City of Zurich Dept. for Cultural Affairs in 2021, a fine arts work grant from the Canton of Zurich in 2019, a recognition prize from the UBS Culture Foundation in 2016 as well as a six-month studio scholarship in Istanbul from the City of Zurich Dept. for Cultural Affairs and, in 2023, a three-month studio scholarship from the Jakob and Emma Windler Foundation at the Chretzeturm in Stein am Rhein. Ana Strika is the 2024 Artist-in-Residence at the ZF Art Foundation in Friedrichshafen.

For more information:
Scholarship holder Ana Strika
www.anastrika.ch

Press contact
ZF KUNSTSTIFTUNG
Regina Michel
D-88038 Friedrichshafen
T +49 7541 77-7114
xhafgfgvsghat@ms.pbz