Each time you enter Anna Helga Marie Cornelie Cambier’s studio, there are new objects and previous arrivals are relating in a different way. She is fascinated by all sorts of materials and techniques, as they allow her to explore ways to interact with her paintings. Anna’s goal is to convey movement in her art and make it more inclusive for the visitor. She wants you to be able to enter the painting and become part of the world she has created. The interdisciplinary artist “loves the blurred line between the familiar and the absurd.” 

Anna’s process

According to Anna, her art is very intuitive. She starts by collecting visual input. She is inspired by people’s stories or memories. Then the process starts. Anna begins playing with materials that blend well with her goal. She collages, always adding and removing. During the process she explores new ways to put the painting into space and transform the materials into emotions.

This can include questioning digitality. At university, she understood that only focusing on paintings was a barrier between her and the audience. She started learning new mediums such as installation and video. This allowed her to add life and movement to the work. During Covid-19 she rediscovered her love for painting and started combining them with materials.

color, contradiction and chaotic order

Anna’s works are teaming with contradiction. The bright colors, coming from the materials she has added,  seem to convey feelings of happiness and joy. Nevertheless, they contain fragments of both negative and positive thoughts she has had throughout the process.  In her mind the outcome is ordered despite looking like chaos at first glance. The onlooker can order the chaos by interacting with the piece.

images by PILOTENKUECHE

In conversation with PK curator in residence Carolina Valente, Anna stressed the importance of developing the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk while here. In the 20th century the Dadists co-opted the term to describe their multi-media style. It was originally developed by German writer and philosopher K. F. E. Trahndorff  in an 1827 essay on aesthetic ideals and revisited by Richard Wagner in 1849. Anna sees the Gesamtkunstwerk as a means to further envelop the viewer. 

putting it into practice

For the final exhibition, Questioning Space Accumulation, Anna is reworking a piece about her grandmother who suffers from dementia. The original video work, entitled Die Zeitwalzerin, explores how her perception of time and space is constantly in flux. She experiences the present by living in the past. When she interacts with an object or music, she is transported to a previous time and place. In the video this is achieved by morphing images and manipulating sounds. The video will be shown on Josephstr during Lichtspiele des Westens.

Along with observations of her grandmother, Anna will do action research with Alzheimers residents at Leipzig’s Diakonissenhaus nursing home. This will enable a broader insight into how it affects perception across the board.  What form can you expect the final piece to take? It is unclear how it will develop. First Anna has to collect her materials.

written by Iqra Ghaffar