Anita Witek was born in 1970 in Austria, she lives and works in Vienna. She completed an MA in painting at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria, and an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art in London, UK.
Amongst many prestigious awards that she received was the Austrian Art Prize for Photography in 2015. Witek uses found visual material to create collages and photomontages, working with analogue phogography. Some of the images take a format of framed three-dimensional photographs, the others are spatial installations that overwrite physical space. As Witek’s main interest lies in the subliminal influence of the photographic environment on our perception and memory, she removes the focal points from the source material by cutting them out. It is the background of these “erased” motifs – the spaces surrounding the depictions as well as the surface structures and fragments that are generally not at the centre of attention – that the artist draws on as her source material. Following the principle of the collage, she layers these elements on top of each other to create imaginary spaces that she then photographs in various stages of the assembly process. By decontextualizing the fragments and transferring them into new, unintended contexts, the artist strives to reveal inherent, latent levels of meaning.
Anita Witek has exhibited world-wide and her works are in prestigious public and pivate collections including Albertina, Vienna, Austria; Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, Austria; MUSA, the Collection of the Town of Vienna, Austria; TBA21 Collection, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Austria; The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas, USA; Charles Betlach Collection, CA, USA; La Jolla, CA, USA.
Anita Witek: Unforeseeable Occurrence by Joseph Constable
On the Matter of Photographs by JJ Charlesworth
‘Five to see: Brussels’, ArtReview, April 2019
‘Anita Witek’, Le Quotidien de l’Art/The Art Daily News, Art Brussels Edition, April 2019
KUNSTMAGAZIN, PARNASS, April 2016
Interview, Studio International, April 2015
this is tomorrow, review by Will Gresson, April 2015
Wall Street International, March 2015
Unforeseeable Occurences, Lentos Art Museum Linz, Austria
Do it in the Dark , AKADEMIE GRAZ, Graz, 13 March – 17 April, 2020
Full Moon, Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Niederösterreich, Weikendorf, Austria, 2018-2019
Don’t call it off-space at das weisse haus, Vienna, 29 November – 12 December 2018
Anita Witek: Clip, Wexner Center of Arts, 3 February – 15 April 2018
COLLAGE II, Welcome Home, Fotogalerie Wien, Vienna, Austria, 5 December 2017 – 13 January 2018
Traces of Time, exhibition at Leopold Museum, Vienna 20 November 2017 – 26 February 2018
Big Art, Circling the Square 2017
Stratified,Fragmentierte Welten, das Weisse Haus, Vienna, Austria, 2017
About Life, Kunsthaus, Vienna, Austria, 2016
CONCRETE Fotografie und Architektur, Winterthur Fotomuseum, Winterthur, Austria, 2013
Utopia,Dystopia: Constructed with Photography, Museum of Fine Arts, MFA, Houston, Texas, USA, 2012