fbpx Anne Imhof | CIRCA

Anne Imhof is among the most influential artists working today. Across performance, painting, film, music and installation, she has developed a singular visual language that captures the emotional atmosphere of contemporary life, exploring desire, vulnerability, power and alienation through works that unfold somewhere between choreography, concert, ritual and social encounter.

Often bringing together musicians, performers and long-time collaborators within immersive environments, Imhof creates situations in which tension accumulates slowly and meaning emerges through gesture, movement and presence. Her works are less concerned with narrative than with sensation, producing experiences that feel simultaneously intimate and monumental. This distinctive approach reached international prominence with Faust, awarded the Golden Lion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, and has since been presented at institutions including Tate Modern, Palais de Tokyo, Hamburger Bahnhof and MoMA PS1.

Imhof’s relationship with CIRCA began at a moment of profound global uncertainty. On New Year’s Eve 2020, ONEtransformed Piccadilly Lights into a cinematic meditation on endings and beginnings, broadcast in the final moments before the arrival of 2021 alongside Patti Smith’s midnight performance. She returned the following year with YOUTH, extending her exploration of freedom, longing and collective identity into public space through a month-long commission experienced by audiences across CIRCA’s growing international network. Together, these projects brought Imhof’s distinctive world beyond the museum and gallery, placing it within the rhythms of everyday urban life.

Whether working with a single image, a live body or an entire architectural environment, Imhof continues to create works that capture the psychological conditions of the present moment, revealing both the fragility and intensity of contemporary existence.

 

Circa Commissions

Anne Imhof, Youth

A group of horses move through freshly fallen snow. They run without destination, gathering and dispersing across an open landscape suspended between wilderness and civilisation. At first the scene appears timeless, almost mythological. The animals seem liberated from history itself. Yet slowly another reality emerges. Towering housing blocks materialise in the distance. Roads, infrastructure and the traces of a social experiment begin to reveal themselves beneath the white surface. What initially appears as freedom is shadowed by something else: absence. For CIRCA 2023, Anne Imhof presents Youth, a film that arrives carrying the burden of a world transformed.

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Anne Imhof, One

Throughout history, moments of transition have generated their own forms of ritual. From religious ceremonies marking the passing of seasons to civic celebrations welcoming the arrival of a new era, societies have repeatedly turned to symbolic acts to navigate periods of uncertainty and change. Presented in the final minutes of 2020, ONE occupies precisely such a threshold. As one year gives way to the next, Britain formally concludes its departure from the European Union, bringing to an end a political relationship that has shaped the continent for nearly half a century. Simultaneously, Europe remains in the grip of a pandemic…

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Anne Imhof: The Eyes of a Horse

YOUTH starts with the eyes of a horse. A poetic trope imbued with projections of sadness, loss, understanding, and hope. We watch a group of seemingly wild horses in the snow, their deep chestnut flanks galloping in slow motion against a poetic snowy landscape. Their legs are submerged in the white powder. They are not weighed down with saddles or riders. In time, we see the animals riding against the context of brutalist housing blocks in a suburban Eastern European landscape. These grey architectural structures are the only hints of humanity—man’s imposition on space.

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