Annett Zinsmeister
On becoming, life as a spatial experiment
Beauty Fatigue’s third profile Annett.
I met Annett about 10 years ago while working as a stylist here in Berlin. In the early days, our talks mostly revolved around her curly hair and how to keep it hydrated, and soon enough our talks went into more depth, discussing self care, yoga, art and travel.
After leaving my job and a break up, Annett took me under her wing and offered her time as a guide to me.
I admire Annett in many ways - her style, grace, and her success as an international artist. But what I admire most is when we see each other, she looks me in the eyes and asks, “How are you really doing?” And that question, asked so genuinely, feels like home.
In October, Nell and I visited her renovated bathhouse, which she shares with her partner Hans, and their sweet dog, Malou.
How would you describe your current self?
A friend of mine is convinced that I am an "old soul". That doesn't sound very charming, but it's a great compliment for me. As an artist with a scientific and architectural background I would describe myself as an artistic soul and an explorer: Creative in all areas, with a pronounced sensuality, love and longing for beauty, and driven by a serious investigation of my social and spatial surroundings.
In dealing with our perception of space I create illusory spatial works and site-specific installations. As a professor of art and experimental design, I mediate between the fundamentals of art, design and cultural techniques.
On becoming
I am highly sensitive and have always - even as a baby - reacted very sensitively to my immediate surroundings. Perhaps this is a reason why I deal so intensively with space and architecture and why my focus is on perception and the experience of space.
As a child, I was remarkably creative, versatile and artistically gifted. As teenager I painted and drew excessively, designed jewelry and my own style of clothing, which I sewed and knitted myself: I learned this from my mother and grandmother who was a dressmaker. I discovered photography and developed the pictures myself. I loved art and went to Museums, Concerts, and Theater. Art was an awakening and liberation for me. In and with art, I discovered foreign and my own worlds, the creative flow often made me forget difficult everyday situations.
My career path was not linear: For my parents, studying art was out of the question. I had to learn a "real" profession. So I studied art and literature to become a teacher, but I never felt right there and when I was out with lumbago the first day of my internship at a school, I realized that I had taken the wrong path: I was trying to please my parents instead of myself and my body forced me to stop and change direction to find my own way. I founded a design label for jewelry, was invited to a well-known fashion trade fair and designed jewelry for fashion shows. But something was missing: in my studies I discovered the passion for science, research and writing. After attending a lecture by Daniel Libeskind in 1989, I understood why architecture is the so-called mother of all arts, and that this is my path after all, after growing up so intensively with it and resisting it for so long.
On new adventures
In 1990, right after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I got one of the very few study places at the University of the Arts and moved to Berlin. I initially stayed at a friend's squat on Mainzer Strasse in the east, in which we have been evicted from, the story gained international press. After 4 months I could move for the first time into my own one-room apartment! It was a very tiny place with a coal stove, no bathroom but an outside toilet and self implemented shower box in the kitchen. This was my first retreat that helped me to focus on my studies in architecture, art, and cultural - and media studies at Humboldt University. To finance my studies I worked as a designer and architect.
This move to Berlin, a city that also had to find and reinvent itself, was my liberation and rebirth: It was a crazy, great time, with clubs, bars in squat houses and exhibitions beyond regulation. In 1992 e.g. I celebrated my 25th birthday with a long table of 25 guests under the colonnades on the Museumsinsel cooking fondue. Until then, nothing had ever taken place there - years later, there was tango, concerts and bars in this very place.
On professional achievements
In 2000 I received the Swiss Art Prize ring, resigned from my job as an architect and got my first job at the University as an assistant professor for drawing. I received a doctoral scholarship in cultural and media studies and at the age of 35, I became appointed professor at the Berlin Weissensee Art academy. In the same year, 2002, my art was acquired by a museum collection for the first time and my first book was published. Invitations to lectures and international symposia and publications and more offers for professorships followed. The purchase of my artworks from the MoMA - Museum of Modern Art New York marked a turning point in my artistic work. Since then, I have received more and more requests to realize large-scale installations that have grown in size over the years, up to 25 meters high commissioned by Kunsthalle Tübingen and 2000 m2 wide by the Spreepark Art Space Berlin.
On space
According to Gottfried Semper, I understand the garment and the architecture as the 2nd and 3rd shell of the human being - the 1st shell is the skin. These shells are not only existentially necessary, they also have a direct influence on our bodily sensations, our emotional life, create well-being or discomfort. This is my primal experience of architecture and what I investigate in my expansive installations, to oscillate between image and space, between architecture and vision, between reality and simulation.
On home
Berlin has changed extremely since the nineties. I am happy and grateful to have been part of its urban transformation and wouldn't want to miss a single day. Today more than ever, I need my place of retreat: after 20 years in Mitte above the vibrant Zionskirchplatz, I have found my place of peace and inspiration in Marzahn, 20 min. from Alexanderplatz, in the midst of the wilderness and beauty of the Wuhletal.
Here we found a historic bathhouse that I transformed into a place for art and living. It's still under construction, but I'm already living in my dream home with my partner Hans Kotter (also an artist) and our little dog Malou. A former swimming pool with a height of 6.5 meters is not a comfortable place in itself. It was the big challenge to transform a functional industrial architecture into a comfortable home in a sustainable and affordable way. My family's furniture has moved in with us: The classics by Mies van der Rohe, Saarinen and Bertoia characterize my home, but not (only) because they are timelessly beautiful furniture, but because they remind me of my grandfather, who taught me basic architectural knowledge at the age of five. Perhaps I also inherited a love of books from him: his living room was characterized by a floor-to-ceiling wall of books that fascinated me even before I could read. I had a similar experience with music and dance: before I could walk, I was pulling myself up by the audio furniture moving to the music. These were always the most important and valuable things for me: books and records, literature, music and dance. Art became my life.
This familiarity and spatial security make a place a home for me. Here I feel comfortable, can be creative, find peace, strength and inspiration, surrounded by books, art, music and nature. Being close to culture is important to me, but being close to nature has become almost even more important to me today. Here I leave the house and can walk for miles through a unique natural area in the city, and when I feel like the hustle and bustle, I drive just to Mitte.
On precious objects
I really had to think about the meaning of objects, and it became a journey to find an answer. I am a so-called war granddaughter and grew up accordingly: In our family there was no abundance. Coming from a family of architects and a dressmaker I grew up in well designed rooms with carefully dressed people but no individual space. And very early on I built rooms according to my ideas in hidden corners and designed my dream houses, with enough space for each inhabitant and their creativity.
So what is most important and equally valuable to me is my environment, not the single object. For me, value is measured exclusively in terms of sustainability. This is the case with cultural artifacts such as books, recordings, art, architecture, but also jewelry and clothing, and my sometimes quite unusual sculptural shoes: as long as one pays attention to natural materials and a resource-conserving production and deals with them sustainably, i.e. keep, maintain, preserve or change, pass on or recycle instead of throwing away. I know that sounds very fashionable these days but I have lived like this my whole life.
How do you recharge yourself ?
As a highly sensitive person, my attention is required to a much higher and more intensive degree than most people. It took a long time for me to understand my situation and my abilities and to deal with it properly. Today, I have managed to find a helpful daily routine: yoga and walks with my dog, regular meal times (intermittent fasting) and clearly defined working hours help me to get enough rest and sleep. A moderate start to the day with a yoga session and a few minutes of meditation helps me build energy and stay calm even in the face of a busy daily schedule. I love dancing tango and salsa in the evening - for me the best way to relax and recharge my batteries. In India I also discovered the practice of yoga nidra, a wonderful first-aid relaxation technique that has the effect of a power nap if you manage not to fall asleep (which is not easy at all).
On beauty
I am deeply convinced that beauty comes from within. Our biography, our lifestyle and our attitude towards ourselves leave visible traces on our body. I am sure that a healthy and conscious lifestyle, healthy food, enough sleep, etc. has more influence on our appearance than cosmetic products. However, if you have dry and sensitive skin like me, you can't do without them. It was at the beginning of the 90s when I brought a whole box full of Ayurvedic cosmetics from India with me, at a time almost nobody in Germany knew what Ayurveda meant. I had discovered the products during several months of travel through India and was impressed by their effectiveness! This is still true for me today and I am exclusively convinced of simple natural cosmetics.
For many years I had been a convinced vegetarian / pescetarian, a real challenge in the early nineties! But when my body started gently to ask for some organic meat, I listened to it, and I feel today very good as a flexitarian with a focus on Mediterranean and Asian food.
What do you find most beautiful about yourself ?
High sensitivity is usually seen as a serious limitation, but it is a really special gift that I really appreciate, because high sensitivity mostly comes with a high degree of empathy, attention, talent and creativity - a bunch of gifts that also demand a sensitive self-care with focus on our capacities and energies. In retrospect, I find it not only remarkable but simply wonderful that this creative energy could produce such strength on my rocky road to professionalization in art, between architecture and science.
Current projects:
I am actually working on a new monograph with my works and installations from the last decade and a publication about my project at Spreepark Berlin, one of the most famous lost spaces in Berlin. One of my installations for Spreepark Berlin is currently on show at the legendary and just re-opened Eierhäuschen in Berlin. The installation in the exhibition „Parc Insights“ runs until May 20, 2024. And I just started preparing my next solo show at Kunstmuseum Celle starting in September this year.
On the internet :
About an Artist: ANNETT ZINSMEISTER, Video Portray 2023
Editor / Art Direction : Sharlene Walker
Editor /Photographer / Art Direction : Nailya Bikmurzina
such beautiful images + writing... Annett's story of how she navigated her career path hit home. Thank you for sharing this Sharlene x