Anne Imhof: body language as tool, canvas and concept
Anne Imhof is one of five radical artists chosen by Michèle Lamy for Wallpaper’s 25th Anniversary Issue ‘5x5’ project. In the midst of Imhof’s carte blanche at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo, we explore how she has redefined the concept of body language
- (opens in new tab)
- (opens in new tab)
- (opens in new tab)
- Sign up to our newsletter Newsletter

In the work of German artist Anne Imhof, the human body is a tool, canvas and concept. Through radical performances, she has redefined body language and become one of the most distinctive creative voices of her generation.
Imhof spent her formative years in Frankfurt am Main, where she taught herself to draw and compose music while working as a nightclub bouncer. Now based between Frankfurt and Paris, she has spent the last decade probing the intensity of isolation, fetishising contemporary consumer culture, and imitating the motifs of neoliberalism. Her performances – spectral, dynamic and unsettling – explore how moments of physicality are becoming increasingly constrained in the digital age.
Anne Imhof, Passage, 2021, and Untitled (Natures Mortes), 2021
Anne Imhof is one of five radical creatives chosen by French culture and fashion icon Michèle Lamy for ‘5x5’, Wallpaper’s 25th Anniversary Issue project. Her practice spans painting, drawing, film, music, installation, sculpture and hard-edged architectural interventions, as well as acclaimed live performances in which disciplines often intersect.
Imhof’s live endurance performances confront the power dynamics between performer and viewer, leaving the latter wondering what’s dictated and what’s improvised. One of her most compelling pieces, Faust, secured her a Golden Lion at the 2017 Venice Biennale. Outside the German pavilion, four live Dobermans occupied a cage. Inside was a glass floor (or ceiling, depending on whether you’re the spectator or spectated) beneath which a cast of activewear-clad performers chanted, gyrated, mutated, and engaged with props to an eerie soundtrack. Her work could be considered intentionally uneasy on the eye, searingly memorable, and entirely unrepeatable.
The artist is currently taking over the entire Palais de Tokyo with a carte blanche solo show, ‘Natures Mortes’, for which she worked with composer and longtime collaborator Eliza Douglas and 30 guest artists. The once-white galleries have been stripped back to their gritty bare bones; a glass-walled maze punctuates the space and disorientates viewers; a polyphonic soundtrack impales the senses.
In October, Imhof will activate the show with a group of performers, who will engage with the architecture, Imhof’s installations, and one another. Simultaneously, she is staging the third of three chapters of ‘Sex’ at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, featuring large-scale paintings, performances and engagement with historical works from a parallel exhibition on expressionist art, ‘Espressioni. The Proposition’.
In Imhof’s work, expression is emitted through those who participate, whether that be performers or viewers. As she has explained of her choreography: ‘It's basically the thoughts of the people that are performing in it that, in the end, shape it.’
Anne Imhof, ’Natures Mortes’ (2021), exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, Paris Àdrian Villar Rojas, Untitled (from the series Rinascimento) (2017), sculpture.
Anne Imhof, ‘Natures Mortes’ (2021), exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Joan Mitchell, La Grande Vallée XX (Jean) (1983), oil on canvas, Coll. CAPC musée d’art contemporain (Bordeaux), Inv. 2004-05.
INFORMATION
Anne Imhof, ’Natures Mortes’, until 24 October, Palais de Tokyo, palaisdetokyo.com (opens in new tab)
A version of this article appears in Wallpaper’s October 2021, 25th Anniversary Issue (W*270), on newsstands now and available to subscribers – 12 digital issues for $12/£12/€12 (opens in new tab).
Meet more creative leaders of the future nominated by Michèle Lamy here.
Harriet Lloyd-Smith is the Arts Editor of Wallpaper*, responsible for the art pages across digital and print, including profiles, exhibition reviews, and contemporary art collaborations. She started at Wallpaper* in 2017 and has written for leading contemporary art publications, auction houses and arts charities, and lectured on review writing and art journalism. When she’s not writing about art, she’s making her own.
-
S94 Design makes the most of its uptown location to blur the lines of art and design
S94 Design brings displays from Kwangho Lee, Donald Judd, Max Lamb and more to its Rafael Viñoly-designed location
By Julie Baumgardner • Published
-
Oasi Cashmere is taking Zegna back to its roots in the Italian Alps
Oasi Cashmere – an environmentally-conscious, all-embracing cashmere collection – is inspired by the Oasi Zegna nature park in the lush Biella Alps
By Jack Moss • Published
-
Lynda Benglis’ seductive hall of mirrors and juicy neon eggs in London
American artist Lynda Benglis subverts expectations with new bronze sculptures and otherworldly coloured eggs in a new solo show at Thomas Dane Gallery, London
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith • Published
-
Remote Antarctica research base now houses a striking new art installation
In Antarctica, Kyiv-based architecture studio Balbek Bureau has unveiled ‘Home. Memories’, a poignant art installation at the remote, penguin-inhabited Vernadsky Research Base
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith • Published
-
The best London art exhibitions: a guide for March 2023
Your guide to the best London art exhibitions, and those around the UK in March 2023, as chosen by the Wallpaper* arts desk
By Harriet Lloyd Smith • Published
-
Ryoji Ikeda and Grönlund-Nisunen saturate Berlin gallery in sound, vision and visceral sensation
At Esther Schipper gallery Berlin, artists Ryoji Ikeda and Grönlund-Nisunen draw on the elemental forces of sound and light in a meditative and disorienting joint exhibition
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith • Published
-
Cecilia Vicuña’s ‘Brain Forest Quipu’ wins Best Art Installation in the 2023 Wallpaper* Design Awards
Brain Forest Quipu, Cecilia Vicuña's Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern, has been crowned 'Best Art Installation' in the 2023 Wallpaper* Design Awards
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith • Published
-
Michael Heizer’s Nevada ‘City’: the land art masterpiece that took 50 years to conceive
Michael Heizer’s City in the Nevada Desert (1972-2022) has been awarded ‘Best eighth wonder’ in the 2023 Wallpaper* design awards. We explore how this staggering example of land art came to be
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith • Published
-
Hiroshi Sugimoto: ‘The deeper I explore Shinto and Buddhist art, the more it reveals the shallowness of contemporary art’
‘Hiroshi Sugimoto – The Descent of the Kasuga Spirit’, at the Kasuga-Taisha shrine in Nara, Japan, sees the acclaimed photographer draw on Japan’s spiritual past and present
By Minako Norimatsu • Published
-
Cyprien Gaillard on chaos, reorder and excavating a Paris in flux
We interviewed French artist Cyprien Gaillard ahead of his major two-part show, ‘Humpty \ Dumpty’ at Palais de Tokyo and Lafayette Anticipations (until 8 January 2023). Through abandoned clocks, love locks and asbestos, he dissects the human obsession with structural restoration
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith • Published
-
Cerith Wyn Evans: ‘I love nothing more than neon in direct sunlight. It’s heartbreakingly beautiful’
Cerith Wyn Evans reflects on his largest show in the UK to date, at Mostyn, Wales – a multisensory, neon-charged fantasia of mind, body and language
By Harriet Lloyd-Smith • Published