Vanessa Gravenor
Vanessa Gravenor, Research Associate Theory & History
Contact:
- Room:113a
- Mail: vanessa.gravenor@hfbk-hamburg.de
Vanessa Gravenor (1992 Canada) is an artist, writer, and researcher. From 2010 to 2014 she completed her Bachelors in Photography at Washington University in St. Louis, USA and from 2016 to 2018 she was a master’s student of Prof. Dr. phil Hito Steyerl at the University of the Arts, Berlin. She has held research grants from the DAAD as a graduate student in visual arts and the Canada Council for the Arts. From 2021 to 2024, she is an Artistic Research Assistant in the department of Theory and History at HFBK under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Hanne Loreck.
Gravenor works in the mediums of film, video, and the performance-lecture. Her artistic works and critical texts question how present-day materializations of violence are embedded within histories and demonstrate how retellings can be a place for power reversals, complicating what is recognized as official truth. Her ongoing research examines methods of unlearning, repressed histories, procedures of forgetting, and the effects of secret operations i.e. in the context of war.
She has shown her work internationally: nGbk, Kunstraum Kreuzberg (Berlin, DE), Kim? (Riga, LV), and VBKÖ (Vienna, AT). She was shortlisted for the 13th Lichter Art Award, Frankfurt, DE and has participated in film festivals such as the 38th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival and the 7th VISIO, Lo Schermo dell’arte, Florence, IT for young artists in film. Her art criticism has been published by Third Text, Blok Magazine, Kultur Mitte, and Art Margins.