Anna Ehrenstein
Kanax 4 President, 2024
€ 950
OrderIn her transdisciplinary artistic practice, Anna Ehrenstein questions the conditions of how we live together in the 21st century. Using a variety of media, including photography, video, digital technologies and social gatherings, she reflects on the overlaps and contradictions between high and low culture and their social contexts.
Ehrenstein worked with rapper and artist Leonidas Emre Pakkan on a song and music video set in Cologne-Chorweiler, the artist's place of origin. The setting is a housing development which is associated in public debate with integration problems, neglect and feelings of threat. The song, written by Pakkan and Ehrenstein, is an alternative national anthem that advocates radical diversity and anti-racism, and accompanies the scenes from Chorweiler and the cinematic journey from Berlin-Lichtenberg to the Bundestag.
The lenticular print shows two scenes from the video. Depending on the perspective from which the work is viewed, one sees Pakkan in the Bundestag or in a threatening situation on the street. For the motif, the artist was inspired by old Scarface posters, which often play with the true crime genre. The presentation deliberately plays with the break in the conventional frame and the Y2K aesthetic.