Sospeso, digital inkjet print on cotton paper, 70 x 46 cm, 2015. Edition of 10
Anna Rose works with sculpture, installations, video and photography, often creating intersections and superimposition between the languages. Hair Piece, a soft, enveloping anthropomorphic sculpture made of synthetic hair, can be worn by the artist’s body, who in turn inhabits other spaces in this hybrid presence, a primordially vulnerable, almost monstrous body-hair. These performative acts, enacted without a public, are situations prearranged for the eye of the video or photographic camera, isolated in instants that have been constructed ad hoc or expanded in videos over a longer time.
The tangle of fibers in her sculptures does not follow the orthogonal pattern of the textiles, but is assembled, woven and sewn according to another logic, closer to the formless school of thought, and its concept of declassification of form: as if a hypertrophic and out of control growth has caused the formal categories to implode from the inside and the body is confused within an indistinct, horizontal and mimetic space.
Hair is a dual material by nature, both an exhibited and intimate part of a person, element of attraction and femininity that can also transmute itself into repulsion and disgust; Anna Rose uses it in diverse works, interested more in the tactile and material quality than in the organic-essential dimension, hence her choice to use synthetic fibers, shifting the reflection to a more symbolic level.
Anna Rose creates states of ambiguity or perceived alienation with which she corrodes the clichés linked to femininity, while simultaneously reflecting on the passing of time, identity and memory. The concept of vanitas is a key word in the research of the artist, which investigates the stratification and the transformation of its meaning over time, alluding to the transience of life, a vice that is paradoxically considered virtuous in the society we live in.
Sospeso 2, digital inkjet print on cotton paper, 70 x 46 cm, 2015. Edition of 10
The Mediterranean Diet, still from video, 2014
Anna M. Rose (USA, 1982) studied Fine Arts at the San Francisco Art Institute. She lives and works in Florence. Her most recent exhibitions in Europe and America include: Hawnhekk (with Jennie Suddick), Spazju Kreattiv, Gozo, Malta, 2018; Primavera in Sospeso (with Jennie Suddick), Robert McLaughlin gallery Art Lab, Oshawa, Canada, 2018; KloHäuschen Biennale, Das KloHäuschen, Munich, Germany, 2016; Performing Mythologies, Colorado Art Center, Denver, Colorado, 2015; Apres Coup Dischiusure, curated by Saretto Cincinelli, TAI – Tuscan Art Industry, ex-Lucchesi, Prato, Italy, 2015; Hair Picnic, with Janean Williams, Das KloHäuschen, Monaco, Germany, 2015; Proyector 2013, International Videoarte Festival, Valencia, Spain, 2013. Her video Ecloga is part of the collection of Casa Masaccio Center for Contemporary Art (San Giovanni Valdarno, Arezzo, Italy).
