Anna Haifisch's work displays a special kind of poetry, poetry that is graphic as well as literary. It is a poetry of heterotopias, of surroundings not found in the day-to-day world yet despairingly commonplace. Here, she spurs us to reflect on the conditions of artistic creation and on the utopian potential of the imagination. With laconic humour, Haifisch practices a drawing-text synthesis associating different genres – comics, free drawing, illustration and engraving. Hers is consequently one of the most individual voices in the contemporary strip cartoon.
Among the numerous figures and motifs in Haifisch's work we find successively: a “creative residence” of delicate mice applying themselves to the art of drawing while isolated from the rest of the world by a violent snowstorm; Walt Disney, Saul Steinberg and Tomi Ungerer having nervous breakdowns by the poolside of a nursing home called the "Pavilion of the Visionaries"; or the mythical highways of Los Angeles, their billboards preserving the Californian dream. In addition to works already published, Haifisch's first monographic exhibition in France presents new work especially produced for the occasion.
Biographie : Anna Haifisch (born 1986) lives and works in Leipzig. She has notably published Chez Schnabel (2022), The Artist 3. Ode an die Feder (2021), Souris en Résidence (2021), Gnocchi Gnocchi - who's there?, in collaboration with Stefanie Leinhos (2020), Schappi (2019), I can't Find my Shoes (2019), The Mouse Glass (2018), The Artist 2 – Le cycle Eternel (2017), The Artist (201 6), Drifter (2017), Clinique von Spatz (2015) and Don't Worry (2015). Her books are mainly published in English, German and French. Her French publisher is Misma.
In 2021 Haifisch was awarded the LVZ Art Prize and in 2020 she was awarded the Max und Moritz Prize as the best German-speaking strip cartoon artist. She has had monographic exhibitions, notably at the Essen Folkwang Museum (2023), at the Osnabrück Kunsthalle (2022) and the Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts (2022). Besides her work on comics and free drawing, she regularly illustrates for the press, in particular for Bloomberg Businessweek, WOZ Die Wochenzeitung, The New York Times, Süddeutsche Zeitung and SZ Magazin, Tagesspiegel, Die Zeit, Zeit Campus, El Pais S MODA, Frieze, The New Yorker, The Guardian US, FAZ.
Exhibition Curator: Anna Sailer, Curator of the Tomi Ungerer Museum – international Illustration Centre
