Susanne Kriemann

Susanne Kriemann is a German artist, photographer and professor at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design.

Susanne Kriemann graduated from the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart in 1997, where she studied in the class of Joseph Kosuth and Joan Jonas. She enrolled in the 'programme de recherché' at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris in 2000.

Susanne Kriemann pursues a research-oriented approach and investigates the medium of photography in the context of social history and archival practice: dealing with archival and found documents, in particular those that have not been used or have fallen into oblivion, is a central aspect to her work. The found photo material then frequently serves as a starting point for her own images. Formal or thematic analogies generate multifaceted layers of association, which address the circumstances in which the historical images were produced, their preservation, as well as their link to the present day-and always also examine her own medium of photography.

With an extended notion of the photographic document, she reflects on the world as an analogue 'recording system' for human-caused processes. This has led to preoccupations with radioactivity and mining, archaeology, and the notion of slow violence. A focus on ecology is prevalent in Kriemann's subjects. To perceive polluted areas as vast photosensitive arrays is key to her understanding of landscape. An exceptional feature is the extraction of pigments from the investigated matter and the use of those pigments to produce her pictures.

Kriemann's work was exhibited internationally at, among others, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and Kunsthalle Winterthur, Zurich. Recently, solo exhibitions of her work were on view at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg and Salonul de projecte, Bucarest. Kriemann has participated, among others, in the 3rd Chennai Photo Biennale, the 4th Kyiv Biennial, the 11th Shanghai Biennial, the 10th Gothenburg Biennial and the 5th Berlin Biennial. Furthermore, she participated in various artist residency programs including the 2019 NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore and The Goethe Institute, Colombo. Publications play a major role in her practice; since 1998 she has made seventeen artist books.

In 2017, Susanne Kriemann joined the faculty of the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design as a professor of fine-art photography. Together with Aleksander Komarov, she is one of the cofounders of the artist-run initiative AIR Berlin Alexanderplatz. Kriemann lives and works in Berlin and Karlsruhe.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023