Anna Jermolaewa

Kloake [Cloaca], 2009

Crashtest, 2002

exhibition period:

June 3 - September 26 2010

Art in the Car Park:

July 30 - August 9, 6.00 - 8.00 p.m.

exhibition space:

OK Offenes Kulturhaus

born in 1970 in St Petersburg / Russia, lives in Vienna

www.jermolaewa.com

Anna Jermolaewa, »Kloake« (Fragment) [Cloaca] (Detail), 2009

Digitalprint auf Alu / Digital print on aluminium · 350 x 72 cm

Courtesy Engholm Galerie, Wien

In her work Anna Jermolaeva focuses on power structures, which she decodes and traces in media such as video, photography, installation and performance. In most cases she opts for a witty conceptual approach that allows her to address important topics in a way that is both memorable and marked by urgency.

The theme of her latest work is the vast quantities of trash generated as an unintentional side effect of our economic cycle. Her eight-part work »Trash« features a waste separation plant in Frankfurt am Main, »Untitled« documents the unsentimental way unsaleable items are disposed of at a well-known Viennese flea market. From Jermolaeva’s photo research the outlines of a global trash economy are beginning to emerge. The spatially demanding photo and video work Cloaca developed for TRIENNALE LINZ deals with the central garbage collection point in Mexico City, currently the world’s largest city. It is a huge, fenced-in area dotted with mountains of trash that have been erected on the lines of crude productspecific waste separation. The area is peopled with the poorest of the poor, who live on this site in improvised lodgings and subsist on the city’s trash.

Jermolaeva is also showing her video work Crashtest in a temporary installation on the roof of the OK Centre.

(Sandro Droschl)