Biography
Ananké Asseff, Buenos Aires 1971.
Visual artists. Has received distinctions and awards such as the KHM Media Art’s Academy Grant, Germany; and the Banff Centre off the Arts, Canadá (2004-2005) together with the Antorchas Foundation (Buenos Aires, Argentina) residency.
She was awarded with the Leonardo Prize to Photography (Argentinean Critics Association) in the year 2002 and a Fondo Nacional de las Artes Grant 2001. Ever since, her work has been recognized by the most important awards in Argentina such as the OSDE 2004 First Award, the 2002 Ciudad Bank Award and 2009 Federico Klemm Foundation Award. In the year 2007 she got a Buenos Aires Metropolitan Art Fund grant.
She took part of a number of collective and individual exhibitions in Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Lima, Chile, Cologne (Germany), México DF, and New York, invited by Martin Parr to participate in the New York Photo Festival. She participate in the 10th Habana Biennale, as well as several international festivals in 2009.
Her work is part of the following collections: Museum of Modern Art from Rio de Janeiro, Museum of Fine Arts from Argentina, Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires, Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Catagnino Museum (Rosario,Argentina), MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art Rosario-, Palais de Glace in Buenos Aires, Caraffa Museum in Córdoba, Argentina, OSDE Foundation (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and other particular collections.
Vision of art
1. Choose a work that represents you, describe it in relation to its format and materiality, its relation with time and space, its style and theme; detail its production process.
In general, everything I do “represents” me. The thing is how much does each of us “hides” inside each work. To mention one specific piece, P.B represents the roots of my conceptual and esthetic development. When I started the P.B series, one of my major questions was: how to represent pain without shouting, how to cry in silence. Being there and hide at the same time. P.B is a photography series in which I use myself as a subject/object of my own narrative. I work on it for three years, from 2001, to 2004. The topic is about the body, as an “object” exposed / subjected / torn by violence and it’s consequence in the feeling and values that hold and rule us.
2. In general terms, how would you suggest to approach your work?
I’m interested in generating a “set” where the public can complete the piece of art with their own story – that is the intention of many artists… More specifically, that the spectator can transcend the first capture (closer and more direct).
3. In reference to your work and your position in the national and international art fields, what tradition do you recognize yourself in? Who are your contemporary referents? What artists of previous generations are of interest to you?
I don’t think my production is related to any defined tradition, and that is the contemporary symptom. I do think it’s related to conceptual art. From the former generation artists I’m interested in, I can mention Berni, Gabriel Orozco, Pablo Suárez, León Ferrari, Robert Frank, Martín Chambi, Cindy Sherman, Tom Zwerver, Tracey Moffat, Oscar Bony, Pep Agut, Rosangela Rennó, Vik Muñiz, Carlos Alonso, Dan Graham and Bill Viola among others. In regards to my generation artists, in national and borderline territories I’m interested in the production by Alessandra Sanguinetti, Adrián Villar Rojas, Martín Sastre, Diego Bianchi, Sebastián Gordin y Jorge Macchi, between others.
4. Choose works or exhibitions from the last ten or fifteen years which in your opinion were very significant and explain why
The main reason for which I mention the following exhibitions is because they have deeply touched me. Is the best that art gives me. León Ferrari at MAMBA (Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires) because it was an explosion of intelligence and sensitivity, as well as the employment of different medias and moving esthetics. The exhibition curated by Lauría in the Culture House in 2007 about the relation between sculpture and drawing, because he got to join marvelous and not very accessible pieces of art and the complete group created a clear, rich and mobile speech. Dialogue land [Territotrios de diálogo] between realism and surreal in the Recoleta Cultural Center in 2006, because the whole thing generated a thoughtful, eloquent and instructive speech. Alessandra Sanguinetti at MAMBA (Museun of modern art in Buenos Aires). I got lost in the simplicity of the photographs and their texture. Surely, there were more exhibitions that I’m not remembering right now, but I do know they were, in my point of view, strongly meaningful.
