© Videonale e.V.
* 1966 in Breslau POL
Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk POL
2011 Best video, Loop Barcelona ESP
Exhibitions [selection]:
2011 EMAF 11, Osnabrück GER
Be careful because it will remain later very strong in you, Galerie Steinek, Wien AUT
2010 Chinese Whispers, lokal_30_warszawa_london_project, London GBR
2009 From Memory. About knowing and forgetting, Museum Dr. Guislain, Gent BEL
20 flashes of freedom, Wyspa Institute of Art, Danzig POL
2008 HeartQuake, Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem ISR
Don’t Worry – Be Curious! 4. Ars Baltica Triennale der Fotokunst, Neue Gesellschaft für
Bildende Kunst, Berlin GER
2007 Global Feminisms - Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA
Documentary footage, reconstructed and authentic interviews, as well as fictional narrative contribute to Anna Baumgart's video on the issue of the tabooization of the victims of WWII. Baumgart observes that women in general – and especially women who were forced into sex work or who were sexually abused by soldiers on both sides – have been generally denied the right to participate in the production of war narratives. The artist has solicited the aid of Joanna Ostrowska, a Polish university student researching the history of prostitution in the German concentration camps in Poland. Based on Ostrowska's findings, Baumgart reconstructs two interviews with Frau W, a German woman who was coerced into providing sexual services for prisoners in the Buchenwald brothel, and with Barbara, a Polish woman raped by Russian soldiers. Baumgart also creates a fictional account of a sexually abused woman going through a course of Bert Hellinger’s psychoanalytic systemic therapy, whose main working method encourages the victims to speak about their traumatic past. Baumgart's video performs a similar therapeutic role, as the artist creates a space for the previously stifled female voices to become a part of the narrative of war.
Olena Chervonik