User:Vivid6000/Nina Ansari

Nina Ansari (born 1981 in Tehran) is a German-Iranian visual artist.

life & work
Nina Ansari (b. 1981 in Tehran) has created an extensive oeuvre comprised of installations, paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and photography. With this complexity, she reserves an artistic and conceptual freedom. As different as these media are, they are united through the conceptual approach as well as Ansari´s biography, which runs like a thread through her work.

The artist, who was born in Tehran in 1981 but grew up in Germany, repeatedly addresses autobiographical memories in her works, such as the war, the question of identity and the emergence of reality. She studied free art and sociology at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach am Main, among others with Heiner Blum and Hans-Peter Niebuhr[1] as well as with Manolo Laguillio. In 2007 she received an Erasmus grant at the Faculty of Fine Arts Barcelona. Nina Ansari lives and works in Berlin.

Her family fled to Germany during the first Gulf War when Ansari was four years old. A key moment for her in Iran was, when the interior of her house was briefly lit up by bomb blasts. The flash of light led to a new perception of reality. In her theoretical and photographic thesis Der Blick in die Fotografie (2010), Ansari dealt with the sense of sight, the human eye and the concept of seeing and gazing by examining the complexity of our perception with a camera. She described her role as an artist as an active one, the camera as a weapon, the approach as a conceptual one. The goal was to define the scope of photography. Today in retrospective she says, that she has exhausted this topic and thus answered the subject of photography for herself.

The following year she spent two months as an artist in residency in Cape Town. Ansari´s sojourn resulted in the photographic series I Carry no Ca$h. She moved into an apartment on Albert Road, located between the city center, a commercial area and the slums. Despite the proximity to a socially disadvantaged residential area, this series was a clear decision against photographing poverty. From the balcony of her apartment, Ansari photographed locals walking by and caught a bird´s-eye view of everyday life. As a photographer, she took a step back in order to capture unnoticedly the beauty as well as the danger. In summary, the series can be understood as a kind of visual diary.

The eponymous portrait of the series, which belongs to the collection of the Stiftung Reinbeckhallen, shows a young South African walking casually but purposefully across the street with a slight sideways glance. His clothes – loose baggy pants, a wide shirt, ear studs, big sunglasses and a sun visor turned upside down – testify to a sense of style and underline the charisma that lies in the way he walks and gazes. The white writing, I Carry no Ca$h, on his t-shirt implies the high possibility of an ambush though at the same time somewhat flirts with the daily danger. The series was included in GELD – WAHN – SINN, an exhibition that took place at the Reinbeckhallen in 2018 and was curated by Lena Fliessbach. After the exhibition, Sven Herrmann donated several works from the series to the Collection of the Stiftung Reinbeckhallen.

Comparing the series Blick in die Fotografie and I Carry no Ca$h, it can be seen that the medium´s self-referentiality gives way to the observant capture of a specific moment. The foreign country and the special light of Cape Town prompted Ansari to absorb everything rather than subject it to a conceptional investigation. The role of the artist changed to a passive one, the portraits stand for themselves and the series takes a unique place in her oeuvre. As mentioned at the beginning, the complexity, the situation-specific and subjective approach towards the media now very subtly become.

Shows (Selection)

 * 2023 Alptraum, Polarraum, Hamburg, Germany
 * 2020 Alptraum, TAM Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, California, United States of America
 * 2019 Wort zu Bild, Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, Germany
 * 2019 Alptraum, Fine Art Complex 1101, Tempe, Arizona, United States of America
 * 2019 Alptraum, La Estacion Arte Contemporaneo Gallery, Chihuahua, Mexico
 * 2018 Geld Wahn Sinn, Reinbeckhallen Sammlung für Gegenwartskunst, Berlin, Germany
 * 2018 A word is worth a thousand images, Berlin Blueart gallery, Berlin, Germany
 * 2018 Black Box, Saarländisches Künstlerhaus, Saarbrücken, Germany
 * 2018 Akroma, Museum Arsenals of Riga, Latvia
 * 2017 Drawing from the Future, 21er Haus Museum für zeitgenössische Kunst, Vienna, Austria
 * 2017 Silent Art Auction, The Drawing Hub, Berlin, Germany
 * 2016 Pseudoscienza, Jan Arnold Gallery, Museumsquartier, Vienna, Austria
 * 2016 Identity’s Rule of Three, Marie-Laure Fleisch Gallery, Brussels, Belgium
 * 2015 Raumschwärmer, SoundCloud, Berlin (solo)
 * 2015 Identity’s Rule of Three, Marie-Laure Fleisch Gallery, Rom, Italy
 * 2015 Saloon, Sexauer Gallery, Berlin, Germany
 * 2014 Front, uqbar, Berlin, Germany (solo)
 * 2014 Alptraum, Maribor Art Museum, Republic of Slovenia
 * 2014 Luminale – Biennale der Lichtkultur, Kunstverein Familie Montez, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
 * 2013 Festiwalla, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany
 * 2013 Rebel in Paradise, Aquabit Gallery / Kunstundhelden, Berlin, Germany (solo)
 * 2013 Anonymous Drawings, Temporary Art Centre, Eindhoven, Netherlands
 * 2013 Pophits & Alptraum, Halle für zeitgenössische Kunst Offenbach am Main, Germany
 * 2013 Anonymous Drawings, Kunstverein Tiergarten, Galerie Nord, Berlin, Germany
 * 2012 War, Gallery Kollaborativ, Berlin, Germany (solo)
 * 2012 Alptraum, Green Papaya Art Projects, Manila, Philippines
 * 2012 We are beautiful losers, A word of Art Gallery, Capetown, Africa
 * 2011 Garage Art, B Fam Gallery, Capetown, Africa
 * 2011 Festiwalla, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany
 * 2010 Coop 6, Festival Junger Talente, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
 * 2006 Fashiontype, Mode und Schrift, Klingspor Museum, Offenbach, Germany


 * Website (homepage)
 * Stiftung Reinbeckhallen Collection for contemporary art
 * Artfacts
 * artatberlin