Anna Jermolaewa

Anna Jermolaeva was born in 1970 in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), Russia (then USSR). In 1987, together with the Ukrainian poet Vladimir Jaremenko and Artem Gadasik, she founded the first political opposition party in the Soviet Union, the “Democratic Union”. The aim of the party was to “liquidate the totalitarian state”. Jermolaeva became co-editor of the illustrated weekly magazine “Democratic Opposition”. In 1989, all three were accused of anti-Soviet agitation and spreading propaganda and criminal proceedings were initiated against them (“Case No. 64”). The KGB conducted interrogations, searched apartments and confiscated manuscripts. Anna Jermolaeva and Vladimir Jaremenko managed an adventurous escape via Krakow to Vienna, where after several months in the Traiskirchen refugee camp they were granted asylum as politically persecuted persons. In Vienna, Jermolaewa studied under Peter Kogler at the Academy of Fine Arts until 2002 and completed her degree in art history at the University of Vienna in 1998. From 2006 to 2011, she was Professor of Media Art at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe. From 2016 to 2017, she taught as a visiting professor for art in contemporary contexts at the Kunsthochschule Kassel in Germany. Since 2018, she has been Professor of Experimental Design at the University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz.
The artist has participated in major international events and group exhibitions, including the 60th Venice Biennale (2024), for which she designed the Austrian Pavilion as the representative of Austria; the 6. Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia (2015); the Kyiv Biennale, Kiev, Ukraine (2015); the Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju Museum of Art, Korea (2014); the 2nd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Yekaterinburg, Russia (2012); the 7th Berlin Biennale of Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2012); the Triennale Linz, Linz, Austria (2010); the 3. Biennale Prague, Prague, Czechoslovakia (1999); and the 48th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy (1999).
Solo exhibitions have been dedicated to the artist at Kunsthaus Bregenz (2023); Schlossmuseum Linz, Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna (2022); Magazin4, Bregenz (2020); Kunstraum Weikendorf (2018); Museum of the History of Photography, St. Petersburg (2017); 21er Haus, Vienna (2016); Galeria Zachęta, Warsaw (2015); Victoria Art Gallery, Samara (2013); Camera Austria, Graz (2012); Kunsthalle Krems (2012); Institute of Contemporary Art, Sofia (2011); Kunstverein Friedrichshafen (2009); and Museum Moderner Kunst, Passau (2004).
The artist has received numerous awards, in 1999 for her participation in the Römerquelle Art Competition; in 2000 she received a recognition award for the Professor Hilde Goldschmidt Prize; in 2002 she was awarded the Pfann-Ohmann Prize of the Vienna University of Technology; In 2004 she was awarded the City of Vienna's Promotion Prize, followed by the T-Mobile Art Award in 2006, the City of Vienna Prize for Fine Arts in 2009, the Outstanding Artist Award (Intercultural Dialogue) in 2011, the Austrian Art Prize for Fine Arts in 2020, the Otto Breicha Prize in 2021 and the Dr. - Karl Renner Prize in 2022.
The artist is versatile and works conceptually and interdisciplinary in the fields of painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation and performance. Anna Jermolaewa lives and works in Vienna.

Anna Jermolaewa's childhood and youth in the Soviet Union, political oppression and personal persecution as well as her own experiences of migration have had a decisive influence on her artistic work. Recurring themes that she deals with critically are dictatorial regimes, subversive strategies to infiltrate political propaganda, general social and political structures, means of rebellion against conformity, questions of identity and the confrontation with the fate of migrants.
As early as 1999, Harald Szeemann presented “Chicken Triptych”, an early video work by the artist, at the 48th Biennale di Venezia in the Arsenale. Jermolaewa soberly and unspectacularly showed on three video monitors plucked chickens pressed close together, rotating on skewers in large grill ovens in various stages of cooking. The presentation is like a memorial to the factory farming that makes our unrestrained meat consumption possible in the first place. The crammed poultry becomes a metaphor for the idea of being at the mercy of others; the animals mutate into anonymous victims of mass extermination.
In 2024, Anna Jermolaewa represented Austria at the 60th Biennale di Venezia and designed the Austrian pavilion with regard to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, which has been ongoing since February 2022. As part of an installation, a ballerina danced daily to the music of “Swan Lake” by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. In times of political upheaval, for example after the death of a head of state, Soviet television sometimes broadcast “Swan Lake” for days on end instead of the regular program. In Venice, Jermolaeva referred to Tchaikovsky's famous ballet as a synonym for a change of power. She transformed this means of censorship into a representation of political protest and resistance, expressing her hope for a regime change at the top of Russia.
The installation “Ribs” from the same Biennale presentation became part of the Generali Foundation collection. The title refers to the ribs, the paired and curved bones that surround the ribcage and protect the internal organs, including the heart in the center, and give stability to the upper body. With “Ribs”, Jermolaewa reveals a subversive strategy of resistance in a dictatorial regime. In the 1950s and 1960s, Western music was banned in the USSR. Therefore, technical means were invented to circumvent this restriction. The few vinyl records smuggled in from the West were copied onto X-ray images from hospitals so that Western pop music could be secretly distributed on this unorthodox carrier material on black markets in the USSR. The music recordings produced in this way are played once a day in “Ribs” on a record player, whose illuminated turntable makes the black X-ray material legible and through whose record needle the music becomes audible. Thanks to the monochrome clarity of the technical process, X-ray images make the invisible visible and reveal the physical wholeness as an interweaving of light and shadow. They not only show bones and organs, but also reveal disease processes, injuries and healing. They are thus images of the fragility of human existence and remind us that a complex world lies hidden behind every individual surface. (Doris Leutgeb)