ARTIST STATEMENT

My work is a natural result of standing still and tuning in with my surroundings. When I’m out with my camera, I’m listening to the landscape, the people… Listening as a way of being somewhere—spending time and openly noticing. What I am looking for is an exchange of perspectives. The resulting works are ‘Inner Landscapes’: (moving) images, voices and sounds that represent insights, symbols or stories that I gather through immersing myself in the environment. I work digitally, but my imagery is reminiscent of painting, often guided by deep colors and the notion of infinite space. Standing in front of the work, the dialogue continues and takes me places.

Offering space for listening and contemplation strongly motivates my work, as I believe that deep listening to our surroundings is a crucial form of activism in an increasingly polarized world. I see the process of my work as a continuous opportunity to treat everything around me as a mirror and to promote mutual acknowledgement.

“A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.” Jorge L. Borges.

ARTIST BIO

The foundations of Anna Swagerman’s (1985) work and its meditative approach began in her hometown near Lake IJssel in the north of Holland, where she grew up with a father who is a fine art painter and, like Anna, also studies the soul of the landscape. Swagerman’s use of ‘deep listening’ to guide her work, reveals her academic background in psychology and sociology, which she completed before graduating from Fine Arts at Weissenee School of Art in Berlin.

Swagerman’s latest video work, ‘Paisajes Internos’ (2022), was made in collaboration with the National Museum Kupferstichkabinett Berlin, and filmed in the forest where late Spanish painter Antoní Tàpies worked, in the province of Barcelona. Spain is where many of Anna’s works were born, but recently she started working with the Dutch landscape again, in particular the lake where she grew up, after receiving a photographic commission from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Anna’s work was exhibited in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam during last year’s Museum Night and has been featured in Parool (NL) and Focus Magazine (NL). She also received an honourable mention in the Fine Art category of the 19th Julia Margaret Cameron Award. In 2023, Anna curated her first group exhibition in collaboration with the European Month of Photography.