Dr. Anne Hemkendreis

VITA

Studies of Art History and German Literature at the Ruhr University in Bochum and the Trinity College in Dublin until 2010. Scholarships from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. Doctorate at Leuphana University in Lüneburg with a thesis on the visualisation of privacy in the interior paintings of the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi, awarded with the Young Researcher Prize of Leuphana University in Lüneburg (Fink 2015). Meanwhile, associate member of the research training group “The Interior: Art, Space and Performance" at the University of Bern (Switzerland). Postdoctoral fellowship, research assistant and lecturer at Leuphana University in Lüneburg (until 2018). Afterwards, work as an artist and further teaching activities at the University of the Arts in Berlin. Scholarships and fellowships from the Klassik Stiftung in Weimar and the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg in Greifswald. Since 2020 research assistant at the SFB 948 "Heroes - Heroisations - Heroismen" (S4 "Aesthetics of Affection") at the Albrecht-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg. Research project on aesthetics of affection of snow and ice in art from the late 19th century to the present.

Main research interests

Aesthetics of affectation and the formation of imagination
Visualisation of privacy and interiority
Strategies of the invisible in art since 1900
Nostalgia in contemporary art
Media Ecology and Ecocriticism
Circus as an Aesthetic Model

Research project

Polar Landscapes and the Female Figure: Art in Times of Climate Change

My research interest is in how environmental knowledge is visualised by artists working on the Arctic – an area particularly sensitive to accelerating climate change. Climate change, as a so-called Hyberobject (Timothy Morton), has a problem of imagination and perception. Therefore, contemporary artists evoke a sensual icy encounter through visualisation and aesthetic mediation of the climate catastrophe. Addressing the popular motif of a human figure within a polar icescape, artists question the colonial understanding of the Arctic as a blank stage for heroic acts. In doing so, they highlight the connections between hegemonic male fantasies of conquest and an increasingly problematic human relationship with nature.

Especially the motif of nude and female figures within (filmed and photographed) mediatic icescapes promises a reality experience – or even witnessing – that provides an acute form of participation in an intensified experience of (extremely cold) nature. The iconographic reference to images from the Romantic period that have, in part, become iconic – highlights that the impression of immediacy and witnessing relies, in fact, on an aesthetic experience. The idea of Arctic nature is thus unmasked as an imagination that is culturally shaped.

In contemporary art, the anthropogenic dimension of the Arctic landscape is in tension with the ice being represented as an independent and living counterpart. This opens up a space for perceiving Arctic nature not as a backdrop for human actions and fantasies of conquest, but as a powerful yet vulnerable element that, as a frozen form of water, ultimately determines life. I am interested in artistic positions that stage ice as an independent and active element. Equipped with its own agency, ice eludes anthropocentric power of possession and challenges the viewer to actively relate to a nature that is becoming more and more extreme. In this regard, the motif of the female figure on the ice mirrors the viewers’ relationship towards the Arctic environments.

Stories of polar heroism and their associated claims to power are disturbingly relevant due to the growing geopolitical interest in the Arctic, with view to climate-change induced ice melt and the resulting freed-up resources and ice-free polar sea. In my research, I examine artists' engagement with romantic conventions of representation and how this contributes to perceptions of the Arctic as a site of hegemonic power claims. Underlying these is an invisible dimension of violence: there are deliberate silences on Inuit knowledge of nature and the importance of women and animals in polar exploration within polar reports from around 1900. In my research, I consider artistic positions that reinterpret the sublime aesthetics of Romanticism, as well as indigenous art that questions the Enlightenment traditions of climate research in the Arctic.

Selected publications

Books

Die monochromen Interieurbilder Vilhelm Hammershøis. Verweigerte Einblicke – Ausgestellte Innenwelten. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2015.

Articles

Anfängliches Sehen: Erfahrungen des Unberührten in Mariele Neudeckers Tankwork Cook and Peary (2013) (erscheint im Winter 2021)

Snowy Landscapes. Symbols of Nationality and Cultural Exchange between Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic Regions? In: Visual and Material Culture across the Baltic Sea Regions 1772-1819, hg. Von Michelle Facos u.a. (erscheint im Winter 2021 bei Routledge).

Ausbalanciert. Der Traum vom Fliegen in den Zirkusbildern Edgas Degas und James Tissots. In: „Manegekünste. Zirkus als ästhetisches Modell, hg. von Margarete Fuchs. Transcript: Bielefeld 2020.

Balancierend Pfeife rauchen: Der Elefant in den Zirkusbildern Henri de Toulouse-Lautrecs. In: „Mit Pauken und Trompeten“. Elefant in Geschichte, Literatur und Kunst, hg. von Theresia Raum und Frank Jacob. Büchner: Marburg 2018, S. 215-242.

Inner and Outer Realms: Opaque Windows in Vilhelm Hammershøi’s Interior Paintings. In: Interiors and Interiority, hrsg. Von Ewa Lajer-Burcharth und Beate Söntgen. Berlin, Boston 2016, S. 297-311.