Anja Studer | The Ghosts We Create

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Anja Studer, “Lake of the Woods,” no date

(courtesy of the Gallery)

A series born at the Venezia Contemporanea Residencies Program in Venice, Italy. Paintings inspired by wildlife and the environmental issues that threaten their existence.

ARTIST STATEMENT – The Ghosts we Create

This newest series of work titled “the ghosts we create” was born in the summer of 2023 at the Venezia Contemporanea Residencies Program in Venice, Italy. The series features mixed media paintings and papercuts inspired by wildlife and the pressing environmental challenges they face, causing their numbers to diminish until they vanish.

The mixed media paintings feature abstract watercolor washes that loosely evoke landscapes, playing with the dynamic between nature and emotion. The color washes are enriched with details in ink, acrylics, 24k gold and graphite. Each artwork includes a wildlife illustration in graphite. Opting for graphite instead of her usual medium of black ink emphasizes the fragility of our ecosystem and underscores the threat of wildlife extinction due to habitat loss, exploitation and pollution. The wildlife illustrations consist of simple line drawings and geometric patterns inspired by folk art from all over the world, and in particular Swiss papercuts.

For the first time the Swiss artist is unveiling a limited edition of papercuts as a homage to this old Swiss tradition. The artist has had a love for traditional Swiss papercuts ever since her childhood and her illustrations have long been inspired by this artform and were translated to ink. A workshop in Switzerland in 2018 gave her the needed confidence to explore papercutting within her art practice. Anja’s delicate papercuts depict wildlife in her distinctive graphic style using patterns. The patterns unravel into lines of paper, echoing the message of wildlife being in danger of becoming extinct and disappearing in front of our eyes.

The artist continues to use her work to raise awareness about climate change, urging action to protect our wildlife before more and more species vanish, becoming ghosts of the past.

Anja will be donating 10% of sales from this exhibition to the Manitoba-based Wildlife Haven Rehabilitation Centre. Wildlife Haven’s main goal is to treat injured and orphaned wildlife and to successfully release them back into their natural habitat.