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Anna Stahn | Newspaper print & Love letter

Anna Stahn’s two etchings Newspaper print and Love letter are based on different ways of communicating messages.

Newspaper print replicates a broadsheet newspaper, created with Stahn’s characteristic line that covers the entire composition. Her ornamental scribbles divide the print into sections and columns, with headings and accompanying illustrations. While her prints are predominantly small intimate expressions, with Newspaper print Stahn has increased the scale but retains a sense of intimacy through the detailed etched lines.

The etching Love letter replicates an airmail envelope, with its characteristic border pattern of red and blue. Love letter refers a nostalgic past when these striped envelopes indicated the senders wish of fast air mail delivery. The envelope is sealed with a heart. Love letters are recurring motifs in Stahn’s practice.

Newspaper print, 2022 (detail)

Together Newspaper print and Love letter are linked to key topics in Stahn’s exhibition Walking Debt at Gl. Strand, Copenhagen in 2022.

Newspaper print has become a focal point of the exhibition as a recurring motif. It also features on silkscreen printed fabric, which is incorporated in several art works referring to the fashionable ladies of Copenhagen of the past and the trades of newspaper wrapped fish by the fishwives of Gl. Strand. The exhibition includes an essay on art, women’s life in Copenhagen, currencies, consumption, and longing written by the artist herself. The essay is enfolded in an envelope sealed with a heart for the visitor to take home.

Learn more about Anna Stahn