Anna Ehrenstein (b. 1993) is an interdisciplinary artist weaving multipolar cosmogony between Berlin, Tirana, and the cloud. She is a professor in the photography department at HGB Leipzig.
Projection Screen Studies (2024)
Anna Ehrenstein, Projection Screen Study IV, 2024, Hijab textile assemblage, 120 x 100 cm
The series of wall works “Projection Screen Studies” evokes sensations of color field painting and the genres yearning for transcendence and the infinite through the juxtaposition and subtle interaction of one of present day histories most culturally and politically loaded fabrics - the hijab. Produced from Hijabs collected within Islamic retail in Tirana and Berlin, the works are created through a meditative and spiritual process of introspection and stand in line with the Islamic tradition of abstraction and highly stylised figuration, intended to evoke feelings of awe and reverence. Referring back to her recurrent use of the veil as a metaphoric screen for the political projections muslim women reflect back towards their viewer, and an extension of her decade long research on the social life of things - the minimalist abstraction of her new work series opens up questions of agency, commodification of muslim identity and material culture, while deconstructing object / subject dualisms through the traces of people in things. The relatively small item of the hijab has become heavily charged with social and political connotations and underlines the idea of identity not as something which resides within the self, but that which is performed through one‘s creation of self through the clothes on wears and the material culture one embodies. Here, the at first gaze innocently looking color study literally unveils a depth of meaning within the seams, a determination that clothing becomes an extension of the body, a technology that is tactile, somatic and tangible.
Anna Ehrenstein, Projection Screen Study IV, 2024, Hijab textile assemblage, 120 x 100 cm
Anna Ehrenstein, Projection Screen Study III, 2024, Hijab textile assemblage, 120 x 100 cm
Anna Ehrenstein, Projection Screen Study I, 2024, Hijab textile assemblage, 120 x 100 cm