ANNA MLASOWSKY – Material & Identity

Interview with Anna Mlasowsky on the occasion of her exhibition “Material & Identity” and International Women’s Day on March 8, 2025

• On April 11, your exhibition entitled “Material & Identity” will open at the European Museum of Modern Glass in Rödental. The exhibition is designed as a retrospective of your creative phase to date. In addition to sculptures, you will also be exhibiting graphics and video installations. What will be the focus of the show and what criteria did you use to select your objects?

The selection of objects was made by curator Sven Hauschke in consultation with me. He has compiled the works to reflect the breadth and focus of my practice.
The exhibition presents works from my entire career to date and also documents the changes in content my work has undergone. It began with an exploration of the material and its craft traditions. My early works, however, also deal with themes of identity, only the material serves as a proxy. The material itself consists of many contradictory properties: as an amorphous solid it us unlike all other materials, as it can be many things at once. We can experience it as simultaneously opaque and transparent, very tough and fragile, and likewise both liquid and solid. This materially-otherness is embodied in glass, and I have always used it to express human otherness and “queerness.”

• As an artist, you also deal with your own identity. How do you express your identity through art?

I have felt like an outsider all my life. On the one hand because I grew up as an East German child in a reunified but unequal Germany and on the other hand because I didn’t fit into the system as a Waldorf school child; as well as through my rebelliousness driven by my learning disabilities and neurodivergence, as a queer person, immigrant (USA and Sweden) and woman who doesn’t fit into the female role.These layers of the outsider come into play in my work in different ways. In some works, such as “As Advertised”, the blurring of the image via sandblasted glass examines the colour coding of a heteronormative consumer culture driven by the media. In other works, such as “Sound-Visions”, my neurodivergence is only represented as an inspiration, to create works that visualize sound in a physical form.

These layers of the outsider come into play in my work in different ways. In some works, such as “As Advertised”, the blurring of the image via sandblasted glass examines the colour coding of a heteronormative consumer culture driven by the media. In other works, such as “Sound-Visions”, my neurodivergence is only represented as an inspiration, to create works that visualize sound in a physical form.

• Feminist themes play an important role in your work. In your “Things That Talk” series, you take a decidedly critical look at traditional expectations of women in works such as “Estrogen” and “Mothership”. How is this reflected in your work?

Since around 2014, themes relating to standardized role models have increasingly come to the foreground. The basis for this is, on the one hand, my personal experiences as a woman and of the women in my life and, on the other hand, the political debates about women’s empowerment and freedom. For the exhibition “Things That Talk”, I worked exclusively intuitively, and all the sculptures were created simultaneously over a period of four months. I had no clear concept of what I wanted to create or why. I didn’t make any drawings, I simply set out to make shapes that I had in mind head without having an idea what they represented or how they would connect but decided to fit them together as I went along. I trusted that it would all make sense eventually and soon enough a clear theme emerged from within the works.

I focused on using materials, textures and shapes to create a series of humanoid but non-figurative sculptures. As they took shape, I realized how I had naturally materialized lived experiences, probing questions surrounding gender roles, traditional notions of women and motherhood, tender intimacy and the process of aging.

Works like “Overextended”(In the foreground of the Images), connect glass hips to two sets of legs made from bee pollen and medical rubber tubing. On the pedestal, cast glass feet curl their toes around the edge of the platform. On the back of the platform rests a pressed glass oyster shell with a large clitoral pearl inside.
In the background are the pieces “Hands Free Ultramarine” made of blue porcelain, wood, blue goatskin and a cast glass Madonna figurine, from whose arm the child has been removed. Hanging on the wall is the piece “Cradle Cock” made of glass, plastic tubing, spandex fabric and latex. By combining materials such as wood, bee pollen, milk powder, poppy seeds, plaster, fabric, fur, ceramics and glass, the sculptures were able to build a narrative structure based on the structural and associative dialog resulting from the proximity of the materials to each other.

• In addition to identity, the exhibition is also about material. What possibilities does glass offer you and what is the appeal of using glass for you?

I love working with glass because I see it less as a material and more as an extension of my character. With all its very different properties, which it acquires in different states, it embodies the flexibility of the personality definition that I feel within myself. To visualize this understanding of the material, I often have the feeling that I am in a relationship with the material and that this relationship is constantly evolving. I have therefore always remained faithful to the material, but I am expanding my repertoire and would say that I am now in a polyamorous relationship with glass and other materials. The special attraction of glass is that I know so little about it, even though I know that it is so versatile.