Anna Haifisch is a comic artist and illustrator. [Illustrator is another word for someone who draws.] She has a very humorous but also very clear take on society. In her drawings, all characters are portrayed as animals. She became known for her comic The Artist. The comic is about a skinny bird who has a very tough life. It represents the struggles that many artists face these days. It also represents the difficulty to earn money with art. And ideas of what it takes to be an artist.

For the entrance area and cloister of Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Anna Haifisch developed several table sculptures. She also developed a new narrative image series. In this series, she lets The Artist explore the city of Osnabrück. The bird responds to the city with humour and irony. Always dealing with the inner conflict of a small town: to feel caught between a sense of security, emptiness and melancholy. [Melancholy means experiencing a big sadness. You feel down.] The bird observes everyday life in Osnabrück. It also spends a lot of time in bed. The motif of the artist in bed is very common in art. It was also common during the period of Romanticism. Today it tells a story of wanting to escape the world, retreat into private and being afraid to fail. Time and time again, the artist is an observer of a world. They want to belong to this world. But they also feel completely overwhelmed.

In addition to publishing her own work, Anna Haifisch (DE) regularly draws for The New Yorker, Frieze, Die Zeit, The Guardian, FAZ or Texte zur Kunst, among others. Most recently, she has exhibited at Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Musee du Papier, Angouleme (both 2020) and Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (2019). In 2020, she was commissioned for the Drawn to MoMA series by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Most recently, Residenz Fahrenbühl was published by her at Spector Books (2021). Her books have been translated into several languages. Her awards include the Max-und-Moritz-Preis as best German-language comic artist (2020) and the LVZ-Kunstpreis (2021).

The exhibition is kindly supported by Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Niedersächsische Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur, VR Stiftung and Freund:innen der Kunsthalle Osnabrück.