Lena Schabus

The works on the Anthropocene by artist Lena Schabus form a thematic counterpart to the program of the 29th International Short Film Week Regensburg. Schabus works with photographic images, which are combined to create new visual worlds. Together with the diverse film program, her image composings offer a series of extraordinary perspectives on a highly topical and often oppressive subject.

Image composing is an artistic technique similar to photomontage, in which photographs are edited, collaged and altered so that they are sometimes indistinguishable from a real photograph. And yet, the final works are subtly unsettling, as they do not reflect the given reality, but rather speculative, alternative realities or even dystopian visions of the future.
The uncanniness in her digital works is sometimes derived from very real threats. It is always initially man himself who shaped nature to his benefit, whose achievements then take on a life of their own and ultimately prove destructive by overgrowing the scenery. The encroachments and legacies of civilization are manifold to see, but does mankind after its flight of fancy still exist at all?

Lena Schabus (b. 1990) completed her master’s degree in Fine Arts and Aesthetic Education at the University of Regensburg and has been an artist in residence in Budapest, France and the Czech Republic. Her awards include the Kunstpreis des Kunst- und Gewerbevereins Regensburg in 2016 and 2020. Schabus was awarded the Neumüller Stipend in 2020 and has held a studio fellowship at the Künstlerhaus Andreas-Stadel since 2017.