Anne Zimmermann

Anne Zimmermann is a visual artist living in Alsace (Wittersdorf). Born in 1973, she holds a Master’s degree in Visual Arts from the University of Strasbourg.

She does not commit to any single medium, instead combining various practices such as sculpture, ceramics, drawing, writing, video, installation, and performance.

In 2003, she created a character named Paula Orpington—a half-woman, half-hen figure made from fifty taxidermied chicken skins. She inhabited this character until 2008. The character symbolically died in 2010 and was autopsied during a performance at the Kunsthalle in Mulhouse.

Since then, her work has continued to explore the relationships we maintain with the organic and with animality. Beginning in 2016, she installed a series of outdoor works involving beehives and butterflies in partnership with La Filature in Mulhouse. The project continued until 2018.

Writing poetic texts has long accompanied her artistic activity, eventually becoming a constitutive element of her practice. These texts may be associated with videos or performances, or are intended to be sung. In 2013, she joined the electronic group “Picobelo.” An album was released in 2018.

The exhibition “Homsweet home” in 2018, organized in partnership with the Swiss National Forest Office (O.N.F.), marked the continuation of her research into photographing animals in forests—a project she has pursued since 2015 and continues today.

She is currently working on the series “Mes p’tites vaisselles” (“My Little Dishes”), a body of work in which she repurposes antique porcelain and earthenware tableware into new visual propositions. Here, she presents trophies inspired by the animals of our forests.

Selected Exhibitions

2004: Jeune Création, Paris

2005: Arborescence, Digital Arts Festival, Beaux-Arts, Aix-en-Provence

2006: Rencontres d’Arles, Off Festival, Arles

2008: Terre animale, Musée de la Briqueterie, Saint-Brieuc

2009: International Performance Art Meeting, Beaux-Arts, Besançon

2010: Déplacement de compétences, Kunsthalle Palazzo, Liestal (Switzerland)

2011: Videos, Galerie Frichez-nous la paix, Paris

2012: Regionale 13, Opening Party Sud, Basel (Switzerland)

2013: Oslo Night and Werke sind Wesen, Villa Renata, Basel (Switzerland)

2014: Heritage Day, La Plomberie, Épinal

2015: Stuwa: Nature and Landscape, Paris and Muespach

2016: Still Leben, La Filature Mulhouse; Regionale 17, Strasbourg

2017: Festival Impétus, La Poudrière, Belfort; Electric Night, Guma, Japan

2018: Ohm Sweet Home Résistance, Le Noirmont (Switzerland)

2019: Oxygène, Scènes de Rue, Mulhouse

2021: Maelström Festival, Le Senghor, Brussels, Belgium

2021: Les Nouvelles Chimères, Espace Saint-Rémi, Bordeaux

Proposed workshop

Ceramics workshop