Anna Steward
Nuremberg
LUCA: think of yourself as a walking, breathing multicellular community.
Installation Research, Microbiology, Entangled Life. 2023Anna Steward's works represent experimental setups in which constellations of domination, clusters of money, sexuality, knowledge and power are called up and played through - or which invite the viewer to take action themselves.
Regardless of whether it is actually technological-scientific imagery or whether a different but predetermined setting is being carried out, Steward creates scenes and situations, artful interweavings in which individual actions or entire performative sequences usually focus on a central gesture or metaphor.Between comic absurdities and tragic transience, artistic practice makes use of a wealth of dramaturgical and creative means. This tonal versatility allows Steward to control the situation precisely, although statements and gestures are often open-ended and not formulated in strict detail.
Steward's work understands every action as a transition between states , stages action and movement as a shift of the self , as a journey, search and individual gain of knowledge .
Steward also consciously focuses on the transience of the experiences gained in her work, elevating the ephemeral and indivisible character almost as a method: it is repeatedly questioned who is performing and who is observing, who can gain experience and grow , who gains what knowledge about whom.
The viewer can never make himself comfortable in the cozy lap of the spectacle and Steward never allows himself to remain in the authority of a hermetic representation.
Instead, artistic practice makes it possible to participate in different states and constellations at the same time, to assume a superposition and to view the entire human tragedy with a cosmological smiles.
Anna A. D. C.: Encounters in the space between.
VR Exhibition, 3D Printed Busts, Virtual, Performing Sculpture. 2022