Anita Witek
Unforseeable Occurrences

The central focus of Anita Witek’s artistic œuvre are our visual habits and the veracity of pictures and texts appearing in the mass media, which she questions by taking the medium of photography as her point of departure. The artist is interested in the specific content that photographs capture over and beyond their primary subjects and which she uses as material for her collages. Her works expose the hidden aesthetic and ideological contents of the originals she uses and turn these into the subject of independent associative stories told through pictures.

The Lentos is presenting Anita Witek’s most recent works which were created in the wake of the pandemic and the mood of social upheaval it triggered. To this end, she worked with pictures from vintage magazines depicting potential visions of the future in the past. Using expressions that reflect the zeitgeist and are inspired by research into social media, she develops titles for her works that are rooted in the present. These are not mere descriptions, however, but represent for Witek potential interventions in the picture, whereby the contents and ​“truths” of the original picture are combined with fictitious narratives. In addition to photographs, Anita Witek is exhibiting an expansive installation in which she invites visitors* to use two portals to engage with ​“Unforeseeable Occurrences”.

Curator: Hemma Schmutz