Anna Skladmann’s (b.1986, Germany) artistic medium combines photography and scanning techniques to reflect critically on aspects of contemporary life and politics exploring notions of nature and society, cultivation and the machine. Her recent work has explored the gendering of humans’ attitude towards the environment with an interest for alternative female-focused narratives rooted in the natural world. Anna’s work has since been nominated for the Prix Pictet and Paul Huf Award, and has also won the Arles Photo Folio Prize. Her photographic projects have been shown at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Museum of Modern Art, Fotofest International, Unseen Photo Fair, Saatchi Gallery and the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe. Anna lives and works in London, UK.
We first met through our mutual friend Burcu Yuksel and co-curated a show together titled Adventitious Encounters at the then Whiteleys Shopping Centre (when it existed). What have you been up to since?
Since then I focused on my art career: exhibiting solo at the Garden Museum and online Artsy, a temporary public art installation at Art Night London and some exciting group shows in London and New York.
Persephone – ‘A Goddess Manifesto – The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence’, 2019
Demeter – ‘A Goddess Manifesto – The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence’, 2019
Your main artistic medium consists of photography and scanning, can you elaborate on your artistic interests and practice?
I’m interested in the Victorian botanist Anna Atkins, who was the first one to use the cyanotype technique to capture algae as a research study (1843). I use photography and specific scanning techniques which create diaphanous forms of the flowers and plants I’m capturing to explore human’s attitude towards the environment with an interest for alternative female-focused narratives rooted in the natural world.
Sir Winston Churchill (2018)
What inspires you on a daily basis?
Nature
Which five words would you choose to describe yourself?
Determined, passionate, critical, logical and altruistic.
Bearded Iris- Iris Croatica
If you could invite anyone to sit down on a table with you one evening, who would you invite, and why (please list up to 5 people)?
Artist Georgia O’Keeffe to talk more about nature and emotions, Artist Hilma Af Klimt to find out more about her spiritual development, Writer Clarice Lispector to investigate our heritage roots, Adam’s first wife ‘Lilith’ – the hot and fiery female who first cohabited with man and my grandmother Ada who passed away after my birth. Reviewing my list, it would probably turn into a seance rather than a dinner!
Are you watching or reading anything interesting at the moment?
I’m currently reading Katharina Volckmer’s ‘The Appointment’.
Foxtail Lily – Eremerus
If you could teleport yourself to any time or place in the world, where and when would it be?
In the times of the biblical earthly paradise, before the expulsion of the Garden of Eden. Just to be able to spend a day in that Garden, my imagination goes straight to flowers the sizes of trees, ripened and luscious fruits and the most colourful leaves, trees and landscape.
Soleil D’Or (2018)
Any exciting projects coming up?
A long planned duo show we have planned for two years with my friend and fellow artist Yulia Iosilzon.
