Annegret Soltau

Annegret Soltau (*1946, Lüneburg) is considered a pioneer of feminist (media) art in Germany. She studied painting and graphic design at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. She worked in Milan and at the Villa Massimo in Rome on scholarships. Her artistic work ranges from drawing to expanded photography and video to installation. Since the mid-1970s, she has been developing her photo overstitchings, photo etchings, and photo restitchings.

Based on her own depictions and those of close relatives, Soltau created images of the female body that ultimately reflect human existence itself – such as the transformative processes of life, including pregnancy, birth, and aging, as well as intergenerational relationships. She had a daughter and a son with her husband, the sculptor Baldur Greiner. Based on this experience, she explored the complexity of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood as physical and social processes in her groundbreaking video and photographic works. She was one of the first artists to question the compatibility of the role of women as artists with that of mothers – a topic that has only come into focus in recent years. 

With the help of thread and stitching, Soltau materializes relationships, both in the medium of expanded photography and in her video works. In doing so, she interweaves the materiality of the body and that of the media in a new way. The stitching can constrict and injure, close wounds or mutilate. But it can also make relationships visible and forge new ones, not only with other people, but also with animals. Soltau has thus created hybrid beings that address body politics in the age of biotechnological developments and digitalization. She has been using the thread since the 1970s to explore relationships and interconnections. Today, threads and string figures are more present than ever in post-humanist and feminist debates from Tim Ingold to Donna Haraway. 

After her works were censored for a long time, especially in Germany, Annegret Soltau is now considered one of the most important feminist artists in the country. The artist’s video archive has been housed at the ZKM since 2010 and comprises approximately sixty tapes.