Annelies Strba


Annelies Štrba is a Swiss multimedia artist, who lives in the Zurich metropolitan area. She works with video, photography, and digital media to approach her subjects, which range from domestically themed images, portraiture, and both urban and natural landscapes.

Life

Annelies Štrba was born in Zug, Switzerland in 1947. She now lives in Richterswil and Ascona, Switzerland. She started showing her work in 1990, and has participated in many group shows alongside other artists known for their portrayals of family, society, and everyday subjects, such as Nan Goldin, Shirin Neshat, Pipilotti Rist and Wolfgang Tillmans. She has traveled internationally for her work, spending time in Japan, Poland, Scotland, Paris, and England, amongst other places. She received a Federal Grant for Applied Art in 1971 and has exhibited widely in Europe, primarily in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Austria, and France, as well as in the United States.

Work

Štrba combines photography, digital media, and film to chronicle her physical and emotional life. A mother of three, she has been documenting her family environment through her work for over four decades. Her best-known bodies of work, Shades of Time, AYA, NYIMA, and her most recent publication, Noonday, depict her immediate family including her three children, and five grandchildren. Although she is working with subject matter that is very personal and quite literally close to home, Štrba constructs a quality of fantastical narrative in her pictures, utilizing combinations of the different mediums in her repertoire. While creating images that evoke fantastical emotion using technological processes, she simultaneously embraces a sense from 19th century romanticism while addressing themes of domesticity and nature.
Štrba uses a digital camera to capture moments and figures in film and still, which she then colors with the aid of computer programs. This digital manipulation provides Štrba's images with a sense of painterliness and allows her to abandon naturalism and realist details in favor of complex visual textures. She often photographs around the family homes just outside of Zurich or in the Swiss mountains, where they spend many weekends and holidays. The product is a personal and poetically abstract documentation of the life around her, capturing her subjects at the dining room table, grooming, in the chaos of untidy rooms, or surrounded by nature. Overall, a personal story is told of the intertwined lives and relationships, speaking to memories, reactions, and nostalgic realization.

Selected works



Solo Exhibitions



2016
, Switzerland
2015

Galerie Anton Meier, Geneva, Switzerland
2014

Annelis Strba - Madonnen, Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
2013

Shades of Time, Kunsthaus Zug
2011

Summerending, Museum Langmatt, Baden, Switzerland
Ferme-Asile, Sion, Switzerland
2010

Frances et les Elfes, Ferme-Asile, Centre artistique & culturel, Sion, Switzerland
Annelies Strba, Jason McCoy Gallery, New York
2009

My Life Dreams: Annelies Strba, Kindermuseum Burg Wissem, Troisdorf, Germany
2008

My Life Dreams, The Brontë Parsonage Museum Haworth, Haworth, UK
Annelies Strba: Selected Works from the NYIMA Series, Jason McCoy Gallery, 2008
2007
Annelies Strba, Jason McCoy Gallery, New York
2006

Museum Valchava, Switzerland
Christophe Guye Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland
2004

Gemeente Museum, Den Haag, Netherlands
2003

NYIMA, Helmhaus Zürich
2001

Annelies Strba: An 1-An11, Kunsthaus Zug, Switzerland
Shades of Time, Centre national de la photographie, Paris
Centre pour l'image contemporaine, St. Gervais, Genf
1999

Eçoles des Beaux Arts, Nantes
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
1998

Europäisches Fotomuseum Paris
1996

Kunstverein Düsseldorf
Kunstverein Weimar
1995

Museum Moritzburg
1994

Albers Museum, Bottrop
1991

Centre d'art contemporain, Martigny



Group Exhibitions



2016

Im Rausch - Zwischen Höhenflug und Absturz, Kunstmuseum Thurgau, Warth, Switzerland
Heiliger Besuch, Museum zu Allerheiligen Schaffhausen, Switzerland
Aufs Land, Bilder von Kobel bis Richter, Schllossmuseum Murnau
2013

Hold und mächtig? Das Bild der Mutter in den Kulturen, Religio. Westfälisches Museum für religiöse Kultur
2012

Alice in the Wonderland of Art, Kunsthalle Hamburg, Galerie der Gegenwart
MART Rovereto, Italien
Annelies Strba and Adrian Schiess: Collaboration, Jason McCoy Gallery, New York
2011

Kunstmuseum Luzern, Jahresausstellung 2010, Luzern, Switzerland
2010

Centre National de l'Audiovisuel, Luxemburg
International Aleppo Woman Art Festival, Aleppo, Syria
2009

Controverses au Botanique, Museum de Botanique, Brussels
Ego Documents. Das Autobiograische in der Gegenwartskunst, Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland
elles@centrepompidou, artistes femmes dans les collections du Centre Pompidou, Paris
2008

In Voller Blüte, Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden-Rot, Germany
Baby. Picturing the ideal human 1840-now, Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam
Adolescents, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland
2007

Top of Central Switzerland, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland
Viewfinder, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle
2006

Museum Chasa Jaura Valchav, Switzerland
In the Face of History, European Photographers in the 20th Century, Barbican Centre, London, Great Britain
Artists for Miroslav Tichy, Museum of Arts, Brno/Brünn ; JEZ, Kyiov ; MMK, PassauLeigh, The Kingston Turnpike, Turnpike Gallery, Kingston, Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University
2005

Kunst Berlin, University of Massachusetts and Hampshire College
2004

Architecture Biennale
kunst kinder karriere, Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen
Rose c’ est la vie – on flowers in contemporary art, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv
2000

fleurs, Museum zu Allerheiligen / Kunstverein Schaffhausen
1999

Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool
New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York
The Nude, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut
Missing Link, Kunstmuseum Bern
1998

Fotomuseum Antwerp
L'imaginerie, Lannion, Swiss Contemporary Art Exhibition, Seoul, Korea
1997

Fotografie als Geste, Staatliches Museum Schwerin
Aspekt: Landschaft, Engelberger Talmuseum
1996

Kunstverein Bonn
The Eye of the Beholder, The Swiss Institute, New York
1995

Sourroundings, Museum Fridericianum, Kassel
1994

Another Continent, Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo
1992

Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Dortmund
Biennale Sydney

Selected collections

France
Great Britain
Germany
Switzerland
USA