Anu Vahtra at P/////AKT

Artist: Anu Vahtra

Exhibition title: Goodbye air pollution, the future is here (The Space Conductors Are Among Us – Part 5)

Venue: P/////AKT, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Date: March 11 – April 11, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and P/////AKT, Amsterdam

Anu Vahtra’s works investigate found spatial situations. Initiated by the architectural characteristics as well as historical and contextual background of a certain site, they often focus on the exhibition format and specifics of an exhibition space but also address issues concerning urban space. She composes both physical and photo-graphic space as if through the camera, bearing in mind distinctive vantage points. What’s important is that the focus of attention is not so much on what her work depicts but rather on how it relates to and is displayed in a specific context.

In Goodbye air pollution, the future is here, Vahtra’s interest in exhibition space meets her fascination with urban space. A series of wall-like structures built out of discarded materials, collected from various demolition and construction sites in the area around P/////AKT, have been arranged in a formation dividing and organising the space. They host excerpts from the process of observing and documenting a city constantly under construction, including photography and video as well as a variety of debris from Brussels and Amsterdam.

Vahtra has participated in numerous group exhibitions internationally, and has had solo exhibitions in Amsterdam, Brussels, Budapest, Cologne, New York, Prague and Tallinn. She has been nominated for the Kristjan Raud Prize (2015) and the Sadolin Art Prize (2014); in 2015 she won the Köler Prize 2015 grand prix, and in 2017 received the Annual Award of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia’s Foundation for Fine and Applied Arts. In 2017 Vahtra was an artist in residence at the International Stu-dio and Curatorial Programme (ISCP) in New York and in 2020 at the WIELS Con-temporary Art Centre in Brussels. She is currently based in Brussels.

New feature:

The Artist’s Library is a growing collection of titles that have, in one way or another, been relevant to the artist’s practice. They will be on view during the exhibition and become part of the P/////AKTSALON collection of books afterwards. Anu Vahtra highly recommends:

– Chris Kraus, Social Practices, Semiotext(e), South Pasadena, 2018.
– Aglaia Konrad From A to K, Koenig Books, London, 2016.
– Philippe Van Wolputte, Temporary Penetrable Exhibition Spaces, Art Paper Editions, Ghent, 2015.

About The Space Conductors Are Among Us

As a platform for contemporary art, P/////AKT aims to allow its artists to create their own mental space inside its walls – an always changing environment for the visitors to immerse themselves in. In 2020/2021 The Space Conductors kicked oﬀ the three-year program Hey! Where is My Mind? and shed their light on what P/////AKT might mean as a space in itself; a crisis center for artists, an exhibition space reflecting its own nature, a construction among other constructions and a place that is subject to gentrification and geopolitical forces.

The participating artists are Stian Ådlandsvik (Oslo, NO), Augustas Serapinas (Vil-nius, LT), Stephan Blumenschein (Amsterdam, NL), Ieva Kraule-Kūna and Elīna Vītola (Riga, LV) and Anu Vahtra (Tallinn, EE).

Artist/writer Brenda Tempelaar (Schoonhoven, NL) moderates an additional public program consisting of texts and events throughout the year, departing from her on-going research into the social and physical space of art within contemporary life.

P/////AKT’s program is supported by Ammodo, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, Mondriaan Fonds.

About P/////AKT

P/////AKT is a non-profit exhibition space for contemporary art that organizes and facilitates large scale solo presentations through which the audience gets the opportunity to gain insight in the thinking space of the artists.

P/////AKT provides a platform for exceptional, emerging artistic talents, who distinguish themselves through their unique and authentic language and who are capable of giving a diﬀerent view on the current way of thinking. They are stimulated to work out new developments and are given the opportunity to present their work to a relevant audience. Furthermore, P/////AKT always asks the artists to produce new work that relates to the specific nature and dimensions of the given space and to present their own mental space as an overall presentation within the given context.

Anu Vahtra, installation view of Goodbye air pollution, the future is here at P/////AKT, 2021. Photograph by the artist