Anna Baumgart
Anna Baumgart
Wearing Opa, 2020
Set of six video stills, unframed
Edition of 5 + 2 AP
Archival pigment prints on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 310gsm
14 x 18 cm each
About this work
Wearing Opa is a series of six stills from the eponymous video (2020). In it, Baumgart uses green-screen technology to dress herself in an old photograph of her grandfather and his two brothers. The flat and static surface of the image becomes tactile pieces of cloth that can be cut, sewn, and worn. Here, identity is placed in a fluid and mobile state, and memories become tangible spaces to occupy, embody and mould. Draping the virtual fabric on mannequins, Baumgart then steps into her Opa’s large figure. She stands matching her two great-uncles in their classic white shirts, until her body dissolves into the fabric of the memory.
About Anna Baumgart
Anna Baumgart is a cross-disciplinary artist using fashion, film and performance to explore the act of dressing in relation to experiences of identity, intimacy, relationships and memories. She is currently undertaking an MFA in Sculpture at Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, after completing her BA in Fashion Design Womenswear at Central Saint Martins, UAL, in 2017. She has been the recipient of several prestigious awards and scholarships, including the Claire Winston Memorial Award and the South Square Trust scholarship in 2019, and the UCL Studentship bursary in 2018. She was also shortlisted for the LVMH scholarship for fashion design in 2017. Baumgart also works as one half of the collaborative duo Boon & Baum, with artist Joe Boon. Recent group exhibitions include Underground Manoeuvres at SoftSpot (2020) London Grads Now at Saatchi Gallery (2020), and Parade - A Celebration of Contemporary Textile Art at Broadway Gallery (2019–2020).
Baumgart’s practice interweaves layers of surface: skin, clothing, architecture, images and digital screens. She investigates their in-between spaces, negotiating visual and haptic encounters of the body. Drawing from her background in fashion design, the artist uses clothing and the act of dressing to explore identity as an embodied social process. Dress being the meeting place of private and public, she is interested in the ways that it shapes, and is shaped by, social situations. Using performance, participatory situations, film and installation, Baumgart explores the relationship between image and experience by inviting physical engagement, where the flat images of fashion become tactile, spatial and active sites of connectivity. She employs clothing as her “medium”; not only in the sense of artistic media, but as a mediator between self and other, body and environment, spectator and participant. The garment becomes a mediating screen: its folds flow between inside and outside, projecting outward images whilst fashioning inner emotions. Equally, she approaches the digital screen as another form of fabric; a space we inhabit and therefore wear, a garment of connection and communication. She questions: What is it like to wear an image? How do we inhabit images as a means to form material relationships in a virtual age? Drawing a parallel between the role of garment as archive, and image as archive, the artist employs images to unfold personal relationships, histories and memories.
Education
2018-2021 MFA Sculpture, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL
2013-2017 BA (Hons) Fashion Design – Womenswear, First Class Hons, Central Saint Martins, UAL
Awards & Prizes
2019-2020 The Claire Winston Memorial Award for MFA Sculpture at The Slade School of Art, UCL
2019-2020 South Square Trust Scholarship for MFA Sculpture at The Slade School of Art, UCL
2018-2019 UCL tuition fee Studentship bursary for MFA Sculpture at The Slade School of Art, UCL
December 2013 Shortlisted for the LVMH scholarship for BA Fashion Design at Central Saint Martins, UAL
September 2016 Short film voted in top 10 for the People’s Choice Award, Fashion Film Festival Milano, Italy
September 2015 Two short films voted in top 10 for the People’s Choice Award, Fashion Film Festival Milano, Italy
Exhibitions
2020
“Bambi Woods Presents”, group exhibition at Ergo Collective & Space 52, Athens, Greece (Boon & Baum)
“Underground Manouevres”, online group exhibition at SoftSpot
“London Grads Now”, Saatchi Gallery, London
2019
“Parade: A Celebration of Contemporary Textile Art”, Broadway Gallery, Letchworth (Boon & Baum)
“UN/FOLD”, performance at postgraduate interim show, The Slade School of Art, UCL
“The Bias Re-Cut”, Heal’s X Slade for London Design Festival, Heal’s, London (Boon & Baum)
“The Bias”, the Slade School of Art postgraduate degree show (Boon & Baum)
“Love”, group exhibition and seminar at The Slade School of Art, UCL
“Dazzle Beach”, sculptural intervention and performance, Devon (Boon & Baum)
2018
“Bias Creations”, postgraduate Sculpture exhibition, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL
“W.O.M.A.N”, The Bloomsbury Theatre, London (Boon & Baum)
“Desperate Artist Seeking”, group exhibition at Safehouse 1, Peckham, London
“Cord for Inner Parts”, San Mei Gallery, London
2017
“UN/DRESS”, Galerie Am Polylog, Worgl, Austria
“21st Faith”, The Workshop, Vauxhall, London
“in/out”, solo exhibition at Art Lacuna Gallery, London
“Bulldog Wardrobe”, performance in the BA Fashion degree catwalk show, Central Saint Martins, UAL