KATRIN STRÖBEL
FEBRUARY 2025
This month we are pleased to welcome Katrin Ströbel into our residency where she will be exploring her project:
How to draw when the world is on fire?
How to draw when the world is on fire? How can the hand hold the pencil steady when everything is falling apart? What sense does it make to draw one line next to the other when social, geopolitical and societal borders are being crossed every day at a speed that neither eye nor hand, head nor heart can keep up with? How can artistic practice, and drawing in particular, be a space of resistance nowadays?
Katrin Ströbel (*1975) lives and works in Marseille, Stuttgart and Rabat. Her drawings, site specific works and installations are based on a critical questioning of social, cultural, and geopolitical conditions that define our everyday life. Ströbel’s work deals with cultural codes and (visual) languages, with issues such as colonialism, migration and displacement, and shows how geopolitics and politics of gender are related. With a critical ironic view, the artist deconstructs gender relations and female stereotypes in various drawings and collages. Since 2021, the artist works on a research project on drawing as a subversive and emancipatory practice.
Katrin Ströbel studied visual art and literature and holds a PhD in art history. She is a mother. Since 2004, the artist has worked and exhibited regularly in Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Peru, Australia, and the United States. Her work has been shown amongst others at MAMAC, Musée d’art moderne et d’artcontemporain Nice, MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo Rome, Kunstmuseum Siegen, Savvy Contemporary Berlin, Ludwig Forum für internationale Kunst Aachen, The Elemental Palm Springs California, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse, Musée d’art contemporain africain Al Maaden Marrakech, Casablanca Biennale, Triangle – Astérides, centre d’art contemporain Marseille and FRAC Lorraine Metz.
Her work is part of various public and private collections such as Kunstsammlung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Kunstsammlung des Landes Baden-Württemberg, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, le Kunstmuseum Mülheim, FRAC Sud Marseille, FRAC Artothèque Nouvelle Aquitaine, Limoges, FRAC Lorraine, Metz, or Fond communal Marseille.
From 2013 to 2023 Katrin Ströbel was professor at the Villa Arson, École nationale supérieure d’art in Nice. In spring 2023, she has been appointed professor at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart.