Vanessa Amoah Opoku

Synthetic Realities

Digital Sensuality and Writing as Artistic Practice

Vanessa Amoah Opoku (b. Troisdorf, 1992; lives and works in Berlin and Basel) inquires into what diaspora and the displacement of bodies and of materials engender. To this end, she records narratives with infra-red light and 3D scans, which transform surfaces into digital fragments, as well as printing techniques and audio, to create large-scale installations in which interrelationships, these experiences have established, coexist. June Drevet (b. Saint-Étienne, 1991; lives and works in Berlin and Graz) writes and publishes about photography and video art at the intersection of cultural and media history, with a focus on (post-)digital visual practices, the questioning and reinterpretation of archival imagery, and publishing as a critical tool. 

Synthetic Realities is a polyphonic conversation about writing and publishing as artistic practice, digital sensuality, and Worlding as a critical conceptual model. The book is a process of uncovering structures and processes and asks how critical observation and lens-based recording can be reclaimed as forms of care. With contributions by June Drevet, Steph Holl-Trieu, Vanessa Amoah Opoku, and Shirin Weigelt. 

This book is the first publication to be released as part of the Jürgen Ponto-Stiftung’s “Anstoß” art criticism fellowship. Since 2025, the foundation, in collaboration with AICA Germany, has awarded a fellowship to one art critic and one artist per year.