Katrin Ströbel

you are here

Was uns Orte erzählen

Katrin Ströbel’s (b. Pforzheim, 1975; lives and works in Marseille, Stuttgart, and Rabat) conceptual drawings and multimedia installations scrutinize the architectural, social, and urban realities that shape contemporary life. The genesis of her works is site-specific and requires extensive local research, which she then translates into drawings, photographs, and sprawling—and, in many instances, performative—installations. Ströbel is interested in the complexion of a space, its history and function, as well as the social parameters that define the place and the power structures or relations between communities that are encoded in it. Most recently, the artist’s receipt of the 2019 Hans-Molfenter-Preis of the State Capital of Stuttgart was the occasion for the realization of her work Vom Berühren und Begreifen (On Touching and Grasping) in the long hallway of the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart’s collection division. Ströbel invited the museum’s team to discuss their daily chores and to draw on an 80-foot-long wall using fingerprint powder. The deliberate act of touching and revealing the traces of art-world staffers who would otherwise be “invisible” takes on particular relevance in light of the general prohibition on touch in exhibition settings and the new social distancing rules introduced in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

you are here collects Ströbel’s creative reflections on the histories, functions, and social and political contexts of the places where her art comes into being and is presented. The monograph sheds light on her approach, in which drawing serves as a medium of communication between societies and class structures. With a preface by Ulrike Gross and a conversation between the artist and the curator Anne Vieth.