The Art Pledge
Portrait of Anna Ehrenstein

Photo: Will Fredo. Courtesy the artist and KOW Berlin.

Anna Ehrenstein

Born in
1993
From
Berlin, Germany
Lives and works
Berlin, Germany
Represented by
KOW
Website
https://www.annaehrenstein.com/

UN goals

Tags

Collaboration can only take place by acknowledging the power inequalities that constitute our existence. In conversations, through respectful interaction and through actually working together on content, these differences can be transcended.

Biography

Anna Ehrenstein grounds her aesthetic approach on urban counter-culture: what was once considered as “cheap” or of “bad taste” is celebrated in her work. Counterfeit, false nails, and outrageous makeup testify of her boldness as an artist, deliberately choosing to show a shameless feminism. But this is just the tip of the iceberg; her videos, installations, live performances, photographs and writing explore subjects like identity, colonialism, sexuality, and authenticity in our globalised era. 


She usually works by cycles, taking time to research a specific topic in order to link it to her artistic practice, such as her multidisciplinary work The Albanian Conference: Home is where the hatred is in which she explores how new technologies create an increasing state of policing. Like Hito Steyerl, Ehrenstein pushes the boundaries of video and asks herself questions about migration and surveillance in our current system. 


Aside from that, her take on female sexuality furthers her ideas on emancipation. One of her photographs from her series Tales of lipstick and virtue recalls L’origine du monde by Gustave Courbet, greatly blurring the boundaries between high and low culture. 

Career highlights

Solo shows

Group shows

Collection

Media

Selected artworks

Related artists