Studios in her native Switzerland

Champel district, Geneva / Mendrisio, Ticino

 

agnes@agnesjanich.com

 

Agnes' working languages are English, both New York City American English, Singapore Standard English and British South African English, as well as Polish, French of France (Français de France) and Swiss French (suisse romand).

 

She has working knowledge of Italian (italiano), some of Dutch (Nederlands) and Swiss German (Schwiizerdütsch), South Korean (Hangul) and Japanese (Nihongo, writing both in hiragana and katakana), enough Latin to know all the proverbs, and enough Hebrew to sing at the temple.

 

Through this website's homepage, you can see Agnes Janich's most important photography series:
• from Agnes Janich's War period, 2006-2012, namely "That You Have Someone"
• from Agnes Janich's Love period, 2013-now, which are "I Don't See the Problem" and "When Will I Die?", 2025
• from Agnes Janich's Nature period, 2017-now, namely "I always forget the word for "forgetting"", 2022.

 

Key monographic essays about Agnes Janich's works are the following:

"Janich’s work acts out, how there is no static self but only one wholly susceptible to time (the displacement and deferral of Derrida’s différance), ever in evolution, in a state of becoming— the matter of writing the body (the language of love and pain) which is always a memory in the making. As she explored the actual affect of atrocity in the War series, in Love Janich produces the fragmented discourse of the self as a lover’s discourse (Barthes’ book, after all, is called A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments); of memory, affect, and absent presence. Both war and love explode the boundaries of the self, as Agnes Janich shows. But we are given the chance as viewer’s to begin again in a language of the body."

 

"one were women played a pivotal role. Janich talks about what is usually silenced in historical narration. Her focus are the stories of women desperately trying to maintain their physical and emotional integrity, as well as children stripped bare of their childhood by the war. (...) Despite an obvious shift towards emotions and intimacy, presented by the artist with the deepest empathy and sensitivity, Agnes Janich remembers."

 

  •  "Agnes Janich Task" by Lyle Rexer, PhD, a contributing art critic for Aperture Magazine"Agnes Janich Task" by Lyle Rexer, PhD, a contributing art critic for Aperture Magazine"Agnes Janich Task" by Lyle Rexer, PhD, a contributing art critic for Aperture Magazine

"What does the artist do in the face of war and the deliberate campaigns of denial of the other’s humanness? How can the artist use images to overcome the limits of memory? (...) At the same time, of course, it is precisely such moments of physical and emotional connection that enable people to survive the most horrendous situations, make choices that involve supreme sacrifices, and consecrate their lives to remembrance and faith. Janich’s greatest strength is that she locates this capacity for love and the vulnerability to violence in the same place: the body. There are no abstractions in her work; everything has to be lived before it can be known and remembered. Only then – with the help of art as part of the process of living – can liberation begin."

 

"She found a way: herself. Making soaps out of her young, model-like body. Staging pictures of sex serving as a background for stories of cannibalism and exchanging a life for a life. Her full breasts and childlike face don't make the truth of these moments any better. (...) Choose the image with which you can identify. Be surprised you're not in her place. Maybe your soul will forgive you."

 

"The artist is not afraid to abuse her bodily flesh to show us haunting secrets of existence normally just whispered upon. Her body becomes an absolute, a sacrifice, an offering. An all-encompassing declaration of: I will do everything, give everything, just to get closeness in return. (...) The artist exposes the body in its naked pain, making physicality a haunting construct half-way between romanticism and terror. The artist redefines nudity in its current cultural context. Body Memory is made of a double optics: first, of the limited, physical body, second, of its liveliness, its sensuality, its intimacy, its identity all facing the unrelenting power of history."

 

Agnes Janich's key museum presentations were held at: KODE Art Museums and Composer Homes, Bergen, Norway, Maison Européene de la Photographie in Paris, France, Kunsthal 3,14, Bergen, Norway, the Swiss National Museum, Zürich, Switzerland, the Sharjah Biennial, UAE, the Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna, Austria, Progr Bern, Switzerland and the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland.