Anja Ronacher

Born 1979 in Salzburg, Austria

Lives and works in Vienna, Austria

Anja Ronacher studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Scenography, MA 2005), at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn, and received her MA in Fine Art Photography from the Royal College of Art in London in 2008. She was nominated for the Kardinal Koenig Prize and the BC Prize, two of the most important awards for young Austrian Artists. In 2015 she won the Sponsorship Award of the Salzburger Kunstverein. 

Her research and work brought her to China, Iran, Israel, Jordania, Mexico and Pakistan. Over the past ten years, Anja Ronacher photographed and researched objects in museums. Focusing on the relation of men to the unconscious and religion, she uses an old analogue photogram technique where she removes the object from its museum surrounding (the vitrine). She subjects every motif to the same process of masking in the darkroom, the result of which is a photograph that shows the object emerging from deep blackness where its precise form can only be intuited. Her work has recently been shown in solo exhibitions at Gallery Leto, Warsaw and Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna, as well as in group exhibitions such as Shaping Time, curated by Harald Krejci, Stella Rollig, Belvedere 21, Vienna, 2022, Vantage Point Sharjah 9, Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE, 2021, Apeiron, Museum of the Radvilas Palace, Lithuania, 2021, Bamako Encounters, National Museum of Mali, 2015. Collections: Lentos, Linz, Austria, Belvedere, Vienna, Collection of the VIF – Vienna Insurance Group, Sammlung des Bundes, (Austrian State Collection), Salzburg Museum (Collection of the City of Salzburg), national and international private collections.