Anna Ehrenstein
The Language of the Soil
The Language of the Soil conjures a speculative cosmology from the traces of digital labor and extraction. Developed through shared research with four data-work researchers from Berlin and Nairobi and through collaborative work with collectives of designers, gig workers and artists in Kenya, Egypt and Albania, Anna Ehrenstein creates 360° video, sculptural environments and photographic assemblages that transform documents into new mythologies.
The project was created with the researchers Ariana Dongus, Richard Mathenge, Mophat Okinyi and Fasica Berhane.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Anna Ehrenstein (b. 1993, Germany/Albania) works in transdisciplinary artistic practice with an emphasize on research, pedagogy and collaboration. Her practice encompasses lens-based media, installation, social moments, and writing.
She studied media art, photography and curation and has been teaching at various prestigious academies and institutions, amongst others Bard College, Technical University and UDK Berlin, Germany, Stellenbosch Academy South Africa or Photopia Cairo, Egypt. Born in Germany to Albanian parents with transottoman ancestry: Albanian, Turkish, Kosovar & Egyptian; she is interested in concepts of plasticity, creolisation, myths, islamic & proto-science fiction and popular culture. Her works circulate around the material culture of the periphery, networked images and ecologies in our interconnected state of prosumption. The materialization of intangible data is as much part of her installation process as community and collectivity.
Ehrenstein exhibited internationally and her work is found in public and private collections; amongst others the Museum of Modern Art Warszawa, the collection of the German State or the Fotomuseum Winterthur.