Gritli Faulhaber (b.1990, Freiburg, Breisgau, Germany) lives and works in Zürich, Switzerland. Her large-format paintings and smaller works are part of a reflection on women painters, the social and cultural conditions in which they work, the history of painting and pop culture and its canons, systems and genealogies of reference.
The large paintings, to which Gritli has been devoting herself for some years now in a free series, draw from the (digital) archive of images in which the artist collects personal and non-personal photographs, and often also photos of paintings. The composition of these images on the canvas, as Gritli explains, is a kind of ‘choreography of emotions’. Feelings, movements and glances are fundamental. For her, reproducing these images does not mean copying but rather imitating in the process of learning and reliving. The pictorial references are carefully chosen and include more or less well-known artists. Gritli’s works are, therefore, not merely a reflection on the history of painting and what does or does not fit into the Western canon, what is remembered and what is forgotten, but also a careful observation of her position.
She is a 2022 recipient of the Swiss Art Award as well as the 2022 Working Grant of the City of Zurich, Switzerland.
