Antje Schiffers

Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung – The 2007 Sprengel Prize for Visual Arts in Lower Saxony

11 December 2007 – 24 February 2008

This year’s Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung - Sprengel Prize for Visual Arts in Lower Saxony will be awarded to Antje Schiffers, born in Heiligendorf near Wolfsburg in 1967. To mark the occasion, there will be a retrospective of her work at the Sprengel Museum Hannover.

Antje Schiffers works with a variety of media, including works on paper,
painting, video and text to portray the realities of the lives of individuals. Her art delves into the social, political, or economic conditions individuals live in and the value this is given as well as what people understand art to be. She learned a number of languages to pursue this project and travelled as a wandering painter through Italy, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
The paintings were realised for bartering purposes: a means of providing for room and board. She stayed in each place long enough to make ‘suitably good’ painting, usually four or five days. In Chicahuaxtla, Mexico a village 3000 metres above sea level, she spent a year painting flowers; this resulted in a flower catalogue. She is currently artist-in-residence at the ContiTech factory in Hanover. In the spirit of the romantic notion of the travelling artistic genius, Antje Schiffers’ work also raised the issue of the economic value of art as well as the material and artist relevance of products, in general.

The awards ceremony will take place at the Sprengel Museum Hannover at 7pm on Tuesday, 11 December 2007. Thomas Mang, President of the Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung,, will present the award. Gabriele Mackert, curator, author and director of the Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, will hold a eulogy.

Antje Schiffers will be there for the exhibition and will give a talk at 6.30pm on 15 January , 2008.