Biography 004
Christiane Fichtner
- Biography
Christiane Fichtner was born on 25
May 1974 in Reykjavik, Island, to the deep-sea fisherman Einar Rydnyk and
the German ethnologist Anna-Maria Fichtner. In 1978
her parents separated. Christiane Fichtner lived with her mother in Hamburg, then
in Konstanz and Kassel. As a child, she was rather unnoticeable, quiet and often
ill. In school, she was only interested in philosophy and religion. She refused
to go to art class. At the age of 13 she joined a group of sprayers who 'decorated'
the orangery in Kassel, among other things.
At 16, she ran away from home
because life with her stepfather, a successful construction businessman, became
unbearable. In the time leading up to graduation from secondary school with an
"Abitur", she lived in one of the last old squatted apartment buildings
in Berlin. During the 1st of May demonstrations in 1993,
she was identified by the police as one of the stone-throwing members of a group
of anarchists. She was arrested and fined.
In 1994
while hitchhiking, Christiane Fichtner met a Kenyan student of architecture who
supported his studies by importing German limousines to Kenya. She spontaneously
decided to go with him to Kenya and stayed there for two years. She worked as
a German teacher in Nairobi. There she met the artist Kivuthi Mutu, who is very
popular in Kenya. The two married. Christiane started making art with clay, material,
fibers and mineral pigments.
Mutu did not handle the "competition"
from his wife well. In 1996 the couple separated.
Christiane Fichtner went back to Germany with two suitcases full of clay and textile
art pieces. She moved in with her mother. In 1997
she presented her works for the first time at a counter-Documenta as examples
of a new "magic inwardness completely uncorrupted by postmodernism"
(P-Ars). She lived in the artist colony Burkhardroth in Hessen. There she became
a member of the artist group ENAF in 1998. The
artistic mission of the group of recycling artists and art theorists was: There
are too many works of art in the world. The fundamental idea of reduction fascinated
and inspired Christiane Fichtner. She received much attention from the media for
her picture burnings (1999 in Frankfurt, and 2000
in Duisburg and Klausenburg, Rumania) and her self-reflexive installation Reduce
to the max (2001 in Hamburg and Krems, Austria).
After
this it was only logical that she go to Bremen to attend the University of Arts.
In Rolf Thiele's class, she worked with arrangements of books and an old tractor,
among other things. The radical conclusion to be drawn from her artistic biography
so far is: The actual artistic work lies in reflecting on the concept of art itself
and continuing to develop it.
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