Time Active
Artist Statement
ANN GRIM
A committed look at our future through the prism of a post-climate change world.
bio
The interdisciplinary artist grew up between Buenos Aires, Paris, Cape Town, Montevideo, London and continues to evolve internationally with world exhibitions.
Grim is known for her post-climate change artworks, having formed the basis of her most famous works: Present is Predatorial (Palais de Tokyo - 2013), Beyond The Unknown (57th Venice Biennale - 2017), Leaving Earth (MACO Oaxaca - 2019).
When Research and Art meet
Ann Grim's research into the effects of environmental collapse on contemporary society plays a central role in her work. In recent years, she has devoted herself to observing our relationship with nature and the fragmentation that occurs when the human body is separated from its natural environment. Her research in geophysics, marine biology and spatial oceanography allows the artist to put into perspective the complexity of post-climate change issues.
For Ann Grim, the desertification of large parts of the world (such as northwestern Brazil, southwestern Argentina, southern Sahel, Zambia, Zimbabwe, sub-Himalayan India and northeastern China) is a powerful metaphor for the Anthropocene era that has continuously affected the world's social structures as well as its economic and cultural spheres. The act of painting these areas vulnerable to desertification is a way of materializing the consequences of our era on the future of the planet. The artist also produces different scenarios related to the erosion and submersion of key areas as well as the increase in the level of methane in the air following the melting of permafrost. Inspired by maps measuring exposure to the risk of sea level rise on Earth, the artist creates landscapes of specific places subject to the impact of sea level. Towns, villages, coastal areas, today well known to all, are represented submerged.
The rise in sea level, with the consequences for coastlines around the world, is one of the effects most shown in his works to date.
Taking pleasure in disobeying and contradicting the expectations of abstraction, her paintings of bird's eye views create a sensitive language that deviates from a fixed linearity. Ann Grim incorporates a close relationship with handcrafting adding high-density relief paste, sand, cracks, ecosystems, para-terraformed domes and other materials to her canvases, creating textures that intertwine with accumulations, marks and scratches that make up the surfaces of her works.
A projective journey marked by the Anthropocene era, in the year 3047.
The worlds anticipated by Ann Grim serves as a starting point, decentralizing the human being and confronting it with the ambiguities of new technologies.
It represents, through performances, videos and drawings, a future where the “living”* could benefit from spectacular anatomical evolutions (hearing, transforming skin, nano repair, increased performance of biotechnologies, resistance to space radiation, etc.).
It creates a new network resulting from all these advances; where nanotechnology would flow through the veins, physiological adaptation would become instantaneous, metamorphosis would fulfil desires, tee-transportation would be available to all, and eternal life at hand.
Her films, life-size installations and performances put into perspective the situation of the Earth in space. The blue planet is thus perceived as a pale blue point "suspended in the void", protected and nourished by an atmosphere as thin as a sheet of paper. She plays with a plastic ranging from the micro to the macro overview effect, using the visitor's experience to switch between reality, dream and digital. Ann Grim's dexterity suggests the difficulty there will be in distinguishing "real" worlds from "virtual" worlds.
Her paintings, drawings, films, documentaries and virtual reality allow her to open a territory of expression towards a spatio-temporal journeys. Her Flying Sharks become a means of mobility to other planets and alternate worlds that she constantly creates and reinvents.
In 3047, life on Columba X (a fictive planet imagined by the artist), serves as a support for her to explore new typologies of civilizations. Vast subject delivered to the imagination of Ann Grim, exploring questions such as: the impact of the singularity and the resumption of biological power on machines, the next environments, the future concerns, the possible ways of interacting , the possible evolutions of the levels of consciousness,...
*"living" includes humans, non-humans, animals, conscious simulated human spirits, and other A.I.
MORE INFO ABOUT
ANN GRIM
Latest/Featured work
Beyond the Unknown
The 3D animation film “Beyond the Unknown” is a fiction of anticipation. Ann Grim's artwork raise questions about human nature, predatory instinct and social hierarchy in a changing environment. The artist expresses the intricacy of social, urban and cultural issues. Her approach is nourished by research and interactions with scientists, thinkers, historians, sociologists, economists ... Beyond The Unknown © Ann Grim 3D animation film 00:03:00 s’ Credit : Artist _ Ann Grim 3D artist _ Matthieu VoVan Music _ Valentin Thénot Voice over _ Frances Young
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Beyond the Unknown
The 3D animation film “Beyond...
