Weekly conversations ...with Elodie Grethen
Elodie Grethen (*1988), is a French artist and photographer. She lives and works in Vienna, Austria and in France. She studied photography at the Friedl Kubelka School for Artistic Photography Vienna, where she graduated in 2018.
She recently moved into one of your studio at Untere Augartenstraße 5, 1020 Vienna.
What are you working on at the moment?
I am preparing my next trip to Sarajevo where I’ll continue my work called “Guarding Lions” on feminism and resistance and how it can be translated in the public space. My goal is to offer a contemporary portrayal of people who, through their activism, their art, sexual orientation or gender identity, question the traditional patterns of gender distribution in post-war Bosnia.
I am also doing research on a new project on fears and anxiety. It’s still in the early stages, I am trying different ways on how to approach this artistically.
And I want to build a dark room in the studio to go back to developing and printing!
Does anything in the current art scene grab your attention in particular?
I think there has been – since #metoo – a broader “conscientization” of political, feminist, racial, and queer struggles that is more and more voiced and that you very slowly start to see in museums and cultural institutions. I am interested in how we can connect as artists and develop a more intersectional discourse, which means also deconstructing and re-interpreting art history from a different perspective that the while male’s one.
You moved into one of our studios with two of your colleagues – how do you think your ways of artistic expression can work together?
We’ll have to figure that out! I am most looking forward to exchanging on our current projects, having feedback or input from somebody, especially since we are from different fields, will probably be enriching.